Sample records for spark chamber photographs

An optical sparkchamber developed for use in the Omega spectrometer. On the left the supporting frame is exceptionally thin to allow low momentum particles to escape and be detected outside the magnetic field.

The initial stage in the data reduction for film from two sparkchamber experiments is described. The film was automatically measured at the Rutherford Laboratory. The data from these measurements were reduced to a series of spark coordinates for each gap of the sparkchambers. Quality control checks are discussed. (author)

A detector consisting of the combination of a drift and a wide gap sparkchambers and designed to detect recoil nuclei stopping in the sparkchamber gas is described. It is shown, that by using an appropriate discrimination the detector allows to detect reliably the recoil nuclei in the presence of intensive electron and γ-quanta beams

A vast quantity of data pours from the experiments on particle accelerators throughout the world. For example, over 300 000 photographs per week came from the three bubble chambers operating on the CERN PS at the end of 1965. The conventional method of processing these bubble chamberphotographs is for each one of them to be examined ('scanned') to see whether it records an interesting particle interaction. The interesting photographs are then passed to hand operated measuring machines to obtain precise measurements of the particle trajectories recorded on the film. Similar measurements are carried out on photographs taken in film sparkchamber experiments. This article on the Flying Spot Digitizers at CERN describes one of the most fruitful attempts to speed and make more accurate the process of analysis of bubble and sparkchamberphotographs. There are two types of Flying Spot Digitizer at CERN — the HPD or Hough Powell Device (named after Professor Hough and the author who, together, initiated the devel...

According to a suggestion of A. Kastler, a sparkchamber was excited by an undamped radiofrequency pulse and tracks about 1 mm wide obtained; the result was interpreted by computation of the coefficients of electronic amplification and partial ambipolar diffusion. This work led us to the construction of a new fast triggering undamped wave-train generator of very high tension (patent taken out by the C.E.A. under the no.: EN 7 134 650 the 27.9.1971). Since this apparatus uses a resonant storage line, its design implied a precise knowledge of high impedance delay lines. The experimental radiofrequency spectra of the input impedance of opened or short-circuited lines were plotted completely and analysed by the circuits theory, new measuring methods were established, dispersion relations accurately checked and the equivalence of the formulas, within the third order, with theses of Debye's Dipolar Absorption demonstrated. General properties of Hilbert's transform were also investigated. From the experimental point of view, the electromagnetic energy storage process was extended to the case of a liquid nitrogen-immersed resonant delay line. The good behavior of the cryogenic experiment, where the main difficulty of icing was overcame by the construction of special electrodes, offers great promise for extrapolation to superconductivity. (author) [fr

Cloud ChamberPhotographs of the Cosmic Radiation focuses on cloud chamber and photographic emulsion wherein the tracks of individual subatomic particles of high energy are studied. The publication first offers information on the technical features of operation and electrons and cascade showers. Discussions focus on the relationship in time and space of counter-controlled tracks; techniques of internal control of the cloud chamber; cascade processes with artificially-produced electrons and photons; and nuclear interaction associated with an extensive shower. The manuscript then elaborates on

To continue the research on neutral currents after their discovery in Gargamelle in 1973, the Aachen-Padua Collaboration set up in the neutrino beam of the PS South-East Area, behind Gargamelle, an assembly of 150 optical sparkchambers, 2x2 m2 extending over 8 m (experiment T230, Nue). Hans Reithler stands on the right.

Report presents the results of a study of combustion in a spark-ignition engine given in NACA Technical Reports 704 and 727. The present investigation was made with the NACA high-speed motion-picture camera, operating at 40,000 photographs a second, and with a cathode-ray oscillograph operating on a piezoelectric pick-up in the combustion chamber. Photographs are presented showing that the origin of knock is not necessarily in the end gas. The data obtained indicates that knock takes place only in a part of the cylinder charge which has been previously ignited either by autoignition or by the passage of the flame fronts but which has not burned to completion. Mottled regions in the high-speed Schlieren photographs are demonstrated to represent combustion regions.

The notes describes the semiautomatic scanning system at LNF for the analysis of sparkchamber images. From the projection of the images on the scanner table, the trajectory in the real space is reconstructed

Before the days of electronic detectors, visual techniques were used to detect particles, using detectors such as sparkchambers and bubble chambers. This plexiglass lens was used to focus the image of tracks so they could be photographed.

The paper, written by its Japanese inventor Shuji Fukui, describes the development of the discharge or sparkchamber in Japan in the 1950s. Flash-tubes were used in air-shower cosmic-ray experiments and this led to his design of a neon hodoscope detector. By including the property of neon bulbs glowing the discharge chamber was born, after he observed localized discharges along the trajectories of cosmic-ray particles. (UK)

This chapter discusses the use of visual detectors in the search for charm and other flavors. The photographic emulsion and the bubble chamber techniques are compared. The main difficulties encounted in searching for charmed and beautiful hadrons are related to the short lifetimes of these particles and to their small production cross-sections, even at SPS energies. Resolution, visibility, the data analysis rate, and exposure time are considered. Most of the charmed hadrons present a large variety of decay modes of which only a fraction has been identified to date. First results from CESR indicate that the average charged particle multiplicity in the hadronic decay of beautiful hadrons is as high as 6.31 + or - 0.35; no B meson decay has yet been kinematically reconstructed. The case of hadronic charmed particle production at SPS energies is examined. The data show that 1) the bubble chamber technique (high resolution or holographic optics) is well suited to the study of charmed hadrons with lifetimes in the range 10 -13 to 10 -12 s; 2) searches for beautiful hadrons remain presently a domain for triggered emulsion experiments due to the smallness of the production cross-sections (provided the lifetime is not much shorter than 10 -14 s); and 3) for particles of lifetimes shorter than a few times 10 -14 s the emulsion technique is still without competitor

The stability of triple GEM detector setups in an environment of high energetic showers is studied. To this end the spark probability in a shower environment is compared to the spark probability in a pion beam.

Was used in a PS experiment. Before the days of electronic detectors, visual techniques were used to detect particles, using detectors such as sparkchambers and bubble chambers. This plexiglass lens was used to focus the image of tracks so they could be photographed.

It is the aim of this work to create a method of photographic development specially adapted to streamer image recording, i.e., with high sensitivity, only two signal levels, low dependence of the track signal on image intensity having a great jitter and noise suppression. The method has to be suitable for machine development of high speed films. A reversal photographic development was used to realize these demands, whereby strong fogging in the first step negative development and a solving process for silver bromide after blackening are specially introduced process stages. This results in a step-function shaped characteristic curve with small transition region having only two signal levels, i. e., independence of streamer image density, good resolution, fine grain, suppression of flares and low noise in the signal of the clear streamer images

This study builds on a previous parametric investigation using a thermodynamic-based quasi-dimensional (QD) cycle simulation of a spark-ignition (SI) engine with dual-spark plugs. The previous work examined the effects of plug-number and location on some performance parameters considering an engine with a simple cylindrical disc-shaped combustion chamber. In order to provide QD thermodynamic models applicable to complex combustion chamber geometries, a novel approach is considered here: flame-maps, which utilizes a computer aided design (CAD) software (SolidWorks). Flame maps are produced by the CAD software, which comprise all the possible flame radiuses with an increment of one-mm between them, according to the spark plug positions, spark timing, and piston position near the top dead center. The data are tabulated and stored as matrices. Then, these tabulated data are adapted to the previously reported cycle simulation. After testing for simple disc-shaped chamber geometries, the simulation is applied to a real production automobile (Honda-Fit) engine to perform the parametric study. - Highlights: • QD model was applied in dual plug engine with complex realistic combustion chamber. • This method successfully modeled the combustion in the dual-plug Honda-Fit engine. • The same combustion chamber is tested for various spark plug(s) locations. • The centrally located single spark-plug results in the fastest combustion

Novel large area sparkchamber having a support for carrying a generally planar, radioactive work piece. The sparkchamber has a thin window which is either a rigid plastic sheet carrying a thin layer of an electrically conductive material on the surface thereof, or a thin planar piece or film of electrically conductive metal. There is positioned in superposed relationship to the thin window, a layer of semi-conducting glass in spaced-apart relationship from the thin window by a resilient insulating seal to form an enclosed gas retaining chamber. An electrically conducting surface is adhered to the upper surface of the layer of semi-conducting glass. An electrically conductive path is provided between the thin layer of electrically conductive material on the thin window and the electrically conducting surface on said semi-conducting glass. The electrically conductive path includes a high voltage supply and TDCs and ADCs. There are also means for detecting the location of sites of impingement of radiation on the electrically conducting surface of the semi-conducting glass, and means for recording and analyzing the information present on the work piece

A programming system available on an industrial computer, type PDP 15/20, performing the exploitation of bubble chamber pictures with the projection tables on line to the computer was developed. This system must suit the particular conditions met in the analysis of photographs from different bubble chambers, the different stage for dealing with the views (scanning, premeasurement, measurement) adapting to different strategies in the handling of measurements. The exploitation of photographs takes place in a conversational mode to which a concrete form is given by sending messages to the operators at the tables and by receiving coded answers. In this framework, the aims of the operating system are: to guide the operator work at the tables while allowing them to interrupt the normal sequence of events, to carry out some elementary logical checks, to write on magnetic tape the checked data with the appropriate labels as required [fr

Preliminary results are given of the application of a direct non parametric pattern recognition method to the classification of the pictures of a multiwire sparkchamber. The method, developed in an earlier work for an optical sparkchamber, looks promising. The picture sample used has with respect to the previous one, the following characteristis: a) the event pictures have a more complicated structure; b) the amount of background sparks in an event is greater; c) there exists a kind of noise which is almost always present in some structured way (double sparkling, bursts...). New features have been used to characterize the event pictures; the results show that the method could be also used as a super filter to reduce the cost of further analysis. (Auth.)

The lens, the so-called front view (see album https://cds.cern.ch/record/1974123), was used in the S30 experiment to converge onto a camera parallel light rays from the front of a large sparkchamber. A second identical lens, the so-called top view, and a large mirror were used to take pictures at 90 degrees in such a way to determine the x,y coordinates in the horizontal plane of each spark. Details of the optics are reported in the note: A $\\gamma$-ray detector for the study of the electromagnetic decay of resonances, INFN/AE - 67/7, 20 Jun 1967, by F. Bradamante, G. Fidecaro, M. Fidecaro, M. Giorgi, F. Sauli, P. Schiavon.

brilliancy control of the oscillo- graph beam was arranged in such a way that the beam would normally be invisible but, when tripped by a contactor at the...oscillator was used. The engine was stopped immediately after fining and the brilliancy control was agg tripped to give a single sweep of the...a spark-ignltfon engine wfth IIght hmcL F@ m pemmt S-1 with XI p?rcent M-z fear -k plaga ; spark advanm, loft-bnnd PltW 2’7’. OthW thiw phla m B

A television digitizer and its application to automatic scanning of Cerenkov imaging using the multistep avalanche chamber in front of optical sparkchamber are described. The results are of interest in the adoption of the automatic scanning of photographic plates of these events or for the on-line application of the television digitizer itself. (orig.)

The development and use of bubble chambers and sparkchambers in the 1950s form the main thrust of this article, the bubble chamber as an example of ''image-producing'' instruments and the sparkchamber as a ''logic'' device. Work on a cloud chamber by Glaser led to the development of the bubble chamber detector using liquid hydrogen, which was later linked to a computer for accurate automatic track analysis. It made possible demonstrations of the existence of a particle or interaction. Sparkchambers were easier to build and so soon became common, various types being developed across the world. The development of sparkchambers originated in the need for timing devices for the Manhattan Project, but work on their design occurred in a number of units worldwide. (UK)

The goal of the Frejus experiment is the measurement of the nucleon lifetime, using a 900 ton fine grain iron calorimeter. The background due to the interaction of atmospheric (anti) neutrinos is studied with data from a sparkchamber experiment in the CERN PS low energy neutrino beam (Aachen-Padova collaboration). The analysis of the data yields a preliminary estimate of the (anti) neutrino background which is expected for nucleon decays into a charged lepton. An important feature of the (anti) neutrino background is that one half of the background come from events where a secondary re-interaction vertex is taken as the main vertex [fr

The aim of this paper is to describe the design criteria and philosophy behind a machine to reproject and photograph the real images of neutrino interactions from holograms taken there in the coming run. Detailed analysis of the vertex region of these events will be done from the photographs. (orig./HSI)

The factors influencing detection efficiency of solid track spark auto counter were analyzed, and the best etch condition and parameters of charge were also reconfirmed. With small plate fission ionization chamber, the efficiency of solid track spark auto counter at various experiment assemblies was re-calibrated. The efficiency of solid track spark auto counter at various experimental conditions was obtained. (authors)

Around the laboratories: Dubna: Physics results and progress on bubble chamber techniques; Stanford (SLAC): Operation of a very rapid cycling bubble chamber; Daresbury: Photographs of visitors to the Laboratory; Argonne: Charge exchange injection tests into the ZGS in preparation for a proposed Booster

The authors find that high energy background events produce localised sparks in parallel plate counters when operated in the proportional mode. These sparks increase dead-time and lead to degradation ranging from electrode damage to spurious pulsing and continuous breakdown. The problem is particularly serious in low energy photon detectors for X-ray astronomy which are required to have lifetimes of several years in the high radiation environment of space. For the parallel plate imaging detector developed for the European X-ray Observatory Satellite (EXOSAT) they investigate quantitatively the spark thresholds, spark rates and degradation processes. They discuss the spark mechanism, pointing out differences from the situation in sparkchambers and counters. They show that the time profile of the sparks allows them to devise a spark suppression system which reduces the degradation rate by a factor of ''200.

The real particles produced in the decay of a positive pion can be seen in this image from a streamer chamber. Streamer chambers consist of a gas chamber through which a strong pulsed electric field is passed, creating sparks as a charged particle passes through it. A magnetic field is added to cause the decay products to follow curved paths so that their charge and momentum can be measured.

The high-speed photographic investigation of the mechanics of spark-ignition engine knock recorded in three previous reports has been extended with use of the NACA high-speed camera and combustion apparatus with a piezoelectric pressure pickup in the combustion chamber. The motion pictures of knocking combustion were taken at the rate of 40,000 frames per second. Existence of the preknock vibrations in the engine cylinder suggested in Technical Report no.727 has been definitely proved and the vibrations have been analyzed both in the high-speed motion pictures and the pressure traces. Data are also included to show that the preknock vibrations do not progressively build up to cause knock. The effect of tetraethyl lead on the preknock vibrations has been studied and results of the tests are presented. Photographs are presented which in some cases clearly show evidence of autoignition in the end zone a considerable length of time before knock occurs.

A laser spark distribution and ignition system that reduces the high power optical requirements for use in a laser ignition and distribution system allowing for the use of optical fibers for delivering the low peak energy pumping pulses to a laser amplifier or laser oscillator. An optical distributor distributes and delivers optical pumping energy from an optical pumping source to multiple combustion chambers incorporating laser oscillators or laser amplifiers for inducing a laser spark within a combustion chamber. The optical distributor preferably includes a single rotating mirror or lens which deflects the optical pumping energy from the axis of rotation and into a plurality of distinct optical fibers each connected to a respective laser media or amplifier coupled to an associated combustion chamber. The laser spark generators preferably produce a high peak power laser spark, from a single low power pulse. The laser spark distribution and ignition system has application in natural gas fueled reciprocating engines, turbine combustors, explosives and laser induced breakdown spectroscopy diagnostic sensors.

This thesis presented at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne describes the conversion and testing of a commercial diesel engine for use as a lean-burn, natural gas, pre-chamber, spark ignition engine with a rated power of 150 kW, in combined heat and power (CHP) plants. The objective of the investigations - to evaluate the potential of reducing exhaust gas emissions - is discussed in detail with respect to NO{sub x} and CO emissions. The approach adopted includes both experimental work and numerical simulation. The report describes the testing facilities used. The results obtained with experimental spark-plug configurations based on simulation results are presented and the influence of various pre-chamber configuration variants are discussed. The results of the tests are presented and the significant reduction of NO{sub x}, CO and unburned-hydrocarbon (THC) emissions are discussed. The authors state that the engine, which achieves a fuel efficiency of more than 36.5%, fulfils the Swiss requirements on exhaust gas emissions. Also, ways of compensating for the slight loss in fuel-conversion efficiency in the pre-chamber configuration are discussed.

The reconstruction of spark positions in a set of low-mass sparkchambers with remote magnetostrictive readout, used in a study of the reaction π - p → K 0 Λ, is described. The main detectors used were optical sparkchambers but in order to provide information close to the vertices low-mass magnetostrictive chambers were fitted inside the cone of the superconducting polarised target magnet. (U.K.)

This book will be a basic, step-by-step tutorial, which will help readers take advantage of all that Spark has to offer.Fastdata Processing with Spark is for software developers who want to learn how to write distributed programs with Spark. It will help developers who have had problems that were too much to be dealt with on a single computer. No previous experience with distributed programming is necessary. This book assumes knowledge of either Java, Scala, or Python.

A universal motor, which is mainly used in vacuum cleaners, generates commutation sparks at the moment when the brush and the commutator segment are separated from each other during rotation. This study investigates the mechanism of commutation spark generation by analyzing high-speed camera images and its electrical aspect. We invented a new external trigger method that used laser light as the trigger signal for the shuttering a high-speed camera. This method enabled us to photographsparks on any desired commutator segments during high-speed rotation, and that made the analysis after photographing easier. This paper shows that commutation sparks in universal motors are generated on every other commutator segment and at the peak of pulses in the voltage between the brush and commutator segment. Other aspects are also clarified, such as the generation of the singular and plural number of sparks on one commutator segment at a time, the time from the moment of spark generation to extinction, and spark generation during a single rotation.

A novel method for determining the thermal efficiency of the SparkJet is proposed. A SparkJet is attached to the end of a pendulum. The motion of the pendulum subsequent to a single spark discharge is measured using a laser displacement sensor. The measured displacement vs time is compared with the predictions of a theoretical perfect gas model to estimate the fraction of the spark discharge energy which results in heating the gas (i.e., increasing the translational-rotational temperature). The results from multiple runs for different capacitances of c = 3, 5, 10, 20, and 40 micro-F show that the thermal efficiency decreases with higher capacitive discharges.

It appears tempting to combine the less polluting combustion of LPG with the energy performances of a direct injection spark-ignition engine. To this aim the study of high pressure injection of a liquid LPG jet, directly inside the combustion chamber of an engine was performed in two ways: Experimental studies: one with fast cinematography and another with the method of Doppler phases in an one-cylinder 'transparent' engine for various conditions of injection and without combustion. They respectively deliver empirical laws for the jet development and some informations about size and speed of the droplets of LPG. A modeling of the jet could then be made on the basis of a turbulent and deviated jet the parameters of which could be adjusted using results of the preceding experimental study. (author)

Reliable operation of the spark ignition system electronics in the J-2X Augmented Spark Igniter (ASI) is imperative in assuring ASI ignition and subsequent Main Combustion Chamber (MCC) ignition events are reliable in the J-2X Engine. Similar to the man-rated J-2 and RS-25 engines, the J-2X ignition system electronics are equipped with spark monitor outputs intended to indicate that the spark igniters are properly energized and sparking. To better understand anomalous spark monitor data collected on the J-2X development engines at NASA Stennis Space Center (SSC), a comprehensive subsystem study of the engine's low- and high-tension spark ignition system electronics was conducted at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). Spark monitor output data were compared to more detailed spark diagnostics to determine if the spark monitor was an accurate indication of actual sparking events. In addition, ignition system electronics data were closely scrutinized for any indication of an electrical discharge in some location other than the firing tip of the spark igniter - a problem not uncommon in the development of high voltage ignition systems.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration — The proposed innovation is Spark-RS, an open source software project that enables GPU-accelerated remote sensing workflows in an Apache Spark distributed computing...

These images show real particle tracks from the annihilation of an antiproton in the 80 cm Saclay liquid hydrogen bubble chamber. A negative kaon and a neutral kaon are produced in this process, as well as a positive pion. The invention of bubble chambers in 1952 revolutionized the field of particle physics, allowing real tracks left by particles to be seen and photographed by expanding liquid that had been heated to boiling point.

Now de-facto the only technology for fuel-air mixtures ignition in IC engines exists. It is a spark discharge of millisecond duration in a short discharge gap. The reason for such a small variety of methods of ignition initiation is very specific conditions of the engine operation. First, it is very high-pressure of fuel-air mixture - from 5-7 atmospheres in old-type engines and up to 40-50 atmospheres on the operating mode of HCCI. Second, it is a very wide range of variation of the oxidizer/fuel ratio in the mixture - from almost stoichiometric (0.8-0.9) at full load to very lean (φ = 0.3-0.5) mixtures at idle and/or economical cruising mode. Third, the high velocity of the gas in the combustion chamber (up to 30-50 m/s) resulting in a rapid compression of swirling inlet flow. The paper presents the results of tests of distributed spark ignition system powered by repetitive pulse nanosecond discharge. Dynamic pressure measurements show the increased pressure and frequency stability for nanosecond excitation in comparison with the standard spark plug. Excitation by single nanosecond high-voltage pulse and short train of pulses was examined. In all regimes the nanosecond pulsed excitation demonstrate a better performance.

A system of drift chambers is being built to replace the present sparkchambers in the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Multiparticle Spectrometer. This system will handle a beam of approx. 3 million particles per second and have a resolution of 200 μm. A summary of the status of the chambers and the custom integrated circuits is presented. The data acquisition system is described. Prototype chambers have been built and tested with results that are consistent with the expected chamber properties

The quality of tracks obtained from a streamer chamber is studied through the measurement of the streamer brightness. The stability of streamer tracks depends on the value of the high voltage applied and its shape. By using a single conical-type spark gap as the pulse shaper, stable brightness of the streamer tracks is attained. The data on the streamer brightness are compared with the result by Bulos et al. and it is found that the brightness is more strongly affected by field parameters than in their result.

The quality of tracks obtained from a streamer chamber is studied through the measurement of the streamer brightness. The stability of streamer tracks depends on the value of the high voltage applied and its shape. By using a single conical-type spark gap as the pulse shaper, stable brightness of the streamer tracks is attained. The data on the streamer brightness are compared with the result by Bulos et al. and it is found that the brightness is more strongly affected by field parameters than in their result. (author)

Fast Data Processing with Spark - Second Edition is for software developers who want to learn how to write distributed programs with Spark. It will help developers who have had problems that were too big to be dealt with on a single computer. No previous experience with distributed programming is necessary. This book assumes knowledge of either Java, Scala, or Python.

In this "Primary Science" interview, Lynne Bianchi talks with Emma Vanstone about "Science Sparks," which is a website full of creative, fun, and exciting science activity ideas for children of primary-school age. "Science Sparks" started with the aim of inspiring more parents to do science at home with their…

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — This data set includes of photographs of marine mammals and sea turtles taken with high resolution cameras mounted in airplanes, unmanned platforms or the bow of...

In the 1950s and 1960s, bubble and sparkchambers were the dominant experimental tools in high-energy physics. While sparkchambers were usually built and fitted to specific experiments, bubble chambers were constructed as general purpose devices that could be used for a variety of experiments. At CERN, the bubble chamber programme started under Charles Peyrou in the late 1950s. The first of CERN's bubble chambers, a 30 cm hydrogen chamber, is seen here being inserted into its vacuum tank. The HBC30, as it was called, took its first beam from the SC in 1959. One of the first pictures taken, of a positive pion-proton interaction, began a long series of pretty images for which bubble chambers would become famous. When it stopped operating in spring 1962, the HBC30 had consumed 150 km of film in its 3 years of operation.

A megavolt gas-filled trigatron gap with a sectional gas-discharge chamber having a more than three-fold range of operating voltages is described. The discharge chamber consists of ten sections, each 70 mm thick, made of organic glass. The sections are separated one from another by aluminium gradient rings to which ohmic voltage divider is connected. Insulational sections and gradient rings are braced between themselves by means of metal flanges through gaskets made of oil-resistant rubber with the help of fiberglass-laminate pins. The gap has two electrodes 110 mm in diameter. The trigatron ignition assembly uses a dielectric bushing projecting over the main electrode plane. Use has been made of a gas mixture containing 10% of SF 6 and 90% of air making possible to ensure stable gap operation without readjusting in the voltage range from 0.4 to 1.35 MV. The operation time lag in this range is equal to 10 μs at a spread of [ru

A test chamber for measuring electromagnetic radiation emitted by an apparatus to be tested or for exposing an apparatus to be tested to an electromagnetic radiation field. The test chamber includes a reverberation chamber made of a conductive tent fabric. To create a statistically uniform field in

A test chamber for measuring electromagnetic radiation emitted by an apparatus to be tested or for exposing an apparatus to be tested to an electromagnetic radiation field. The test chamber includes a reverberation chamber made of a conductive tent fabric. To create a statistically uniform field in

Full Text Available The article contains a thermodynamic analysis of a new combustion system that allows the combustion of stratified gas mixtures with mean air excess coefficient in the range 1.4-1.8. Spark ignition was used in the pre-chamber that has been mounted in the engine cylinder head and contained a rich mixture out of which a turbulent flow of ignited mixture is ejected. It allows spark-jet ignition and the turbulent combustion of the lean mixture in the main combustion chamber. This resulted in a two-stage combustion system for lean mixtures. The experimental study has been conducted using a single-cylinder test engine with a geometric compression ratio ε = 15.5 adapted for natural gas supply. The tests were performed at engine speed n = 2000 rpm under stationary engine load when the engine operating parameters and toxic compounds emissions have been recorded. Analysis of the results allowed to conclude that the evaluated combustion system offers large flexibility in the initiation of charge ignition through an appropriate control of the fuel quantities supplied into the pre-chamber and into the main combustion chamber. The research concluded with determining the charge ignition criterion for a suitably divided total fuel dose fed to the cylinder.

The highest brightness temperature ever observed are from "nanoshots" from the Crab pulsar which we argue could be the signature of bursts of vacuum e± pair production. If so this would be the first time the astronomical Schwinger effect has been observed. These "Schwinger sparks" would be an intermittent but extremely powerful, ~103 L⊙, 10 PeV e± accelerator in the heart of the Crab. These nanosecond duration sparks are generated in a volume less than 1 m3 and the existence of such sparks has implications for the small scale structure of the magnetic field of young pulsars such as the Crab. As a result, this mechanism may also play a role in producing other enigmatic bright short radio transients such as fast radio bursts.

My name is Naoimh Riordan and I am the Vice Principal of Rockboro Primary School in Cork City, South of Ireland. I am a full time class primary teacher and I teach 4th class, my students are aged between 9-10 years. My passion for education has developed over the years and grown towards STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects. I believe these subjects are the way forward for our future. My passion and beliefs are driven by the unique after school programme that I have developed. It is titled "Sparks" coming from the term Bright Sparks. "Sparks" is an after school programme with a difference where the STEM subjects are concentrated on through lessons such as Science, Veterinary Science Computer Animation /Coding, Eco engineering, Robotics, Magical Maths, Chess and Creative Writing. All these subjects are taught through activity based learning and are one-hour long each week for a ten-week term. "Sparks" is fully inclusive and non-selective which gives all students of any level of ability an opportunity to engage into these subjects. "Sparks" is open to all primary students in County Cork. The "Sparks" after school programme is taught by tutors from the different Universities and Colleges in Cork City. It works very well because the tutor brings their knowledge, skills and specialised equipment from their respective universities and in turn the tutor gains invaluable teaching practise, can trial a pilot programme in a chosen STEM subject and gain an insight into what works in the physical classroom.

Parallel-plate avalanche chambers (PPAC) are widely used in physics experiments because they are fast ( 5 counts/mm 2 . A resistive-plate chamber (RPC) is similar to the PPAC in construction except that one or both of the electrodes are made from high resistivity (≥10 10 Ω·cm) materials. In practice RPCs are usually used in the spark mode. Resistive electrodes are charged by sparks, locally reducing the actual electric field in the gap. The size of the charged surface is about 10 mm 2 , leaving the rest of the detector unaffected. Therefore, the rate capability of such detectors in the spark mode is considerably higher than conventional spark counters. Among the different glasses tested the best results were obtained with electron type conductive glasses, which obey Ohm's law. Most of the work with such glasses was done with high pressure parallel-plate chambers (10 atm) for time-of-flight measurements. Resistive glasses have been expensive and produced only in small quantities. Now resistive glasses are commercially available, although they are still expensive in small scale production. From the positive experience of different groups working with the resistive glasses, it was decided to review the old idea to use this glass for the RPC. This work has investigated the possibility of using the RPC at 1 atm and in the avalanche mode. This has several advantages: simplicity of construction, high rate capability, low voltage operation, and the ability to work with non-flammable gases

This image is taken from one of CERN's bubble chambers and shows the decay of a positive kaon in flight. The decay products of this kaon can be seen spiraling in the magnetic field of the chamber. The invention of bubble chambers in 1952 revolutionized the field of particle physics, allowing real tracks left by particles to be seen and photographed by expanding liquid that has been heated to boiling point.

Cloud Chamber takes its roots in a performance project, titled The Guests 做东, devised by Verina Gfader for the 11th Shanghai Biennale, ‘Why Not Ask Again: Arguments, Counter-arguments, and Stories’. Departing from the inclusion of the biennale audience to write a future folk tale, Cloud Chamber...

A medium size hydrogen bubble chamber has been constructed at the National Laboratory for High Energy Physics, KEK. The bubble chamber has been designed to be operated with a maximum rate of three times per half a second in every two second repetition time of the accelerator, by utilizing a hydraulic expansion system. The bubble chamber has a one meter diameter and a visible volume of about 280 l. A three-view stereo camera system is used for taking photographic pictures of the chamber. A 2 MW bubble chamber magnet is constructed. The main part of the bubble chamber vessel is supported by the magnet yoke. The magnet gives a maximum field of 18.4 kG at the centre of the fiducial volume of the chamber. The overall system of the KEK 1 m hydrogen bubble chamber facility is described in some detail. Some operational characteristics of the facility are also reported. (auth.)

Proportional multi-wire chamber. Multi-wire detectors contain layers of positively and negatively charged wires enclosed in a chamber full of gas. A charged particle passing through the chamber knocks negatively charged electrons out of atoms in the gas, leaving behind positive ions. The electrons are pulled towards the positively charged wires. They collide with other atoms on the way, producing an avalanche of electrons and ions. The movement of these electrons and ions induces an electric pulse in the wires which is collected by fast electronics. The size of the pulse is proportional to the energy loss of the original particle. Proportional wire chambers allow a much quicker reading than the optical or magnetoscriptive readout wire chambers.

A spark delivery system for generating a spark using a laser beam is provided, the spark delivery system including a laser light source and a laser delivery assembly. The laser delivery assembly includes a hollow fiber and a launch assembly comprising launch focusing optics to input the laser beam in the hollow fiber. In addition, the laser delivery assembly includes exit focusing optics that demagnify an exit beam of laser light from the hollow fiber, thereby increasing the intensity of the laser beam and creating a spark. In accordance with embodiments of the present invention, the assembly may be used to create a spark in a combustion engine. In accordance with other embodiments of the present invention, a method of using the spark delivery system is provided. In addition, a method of choosing an appropriate fiber for creating a spark using a laser beam is also presented.

Magnetoscriptive readout wire chamber. Multi-wire detectors contain layers of positively and negatively charged wires enclosed in a chamber full of gas. A charged particle passing through the chamber knocks negatively charged electrons out of atoms in the gas, leaving behind positive ions. The electrons are pulled towards the positively charged wires. They collide with other atoms on the way, producing an avalanche of electrons and ions. The movement of these electrons and ions induces an electric pulse in the wires which is collected by fast electronics. The size of the pulse is proportional to the energy loss of the original particle.

Magnetoscriptive readout wire chamber.Multi-wire detectors contain layers of positively and negatively charged wires enclosed in a chamber full of gas. A charged particle passing through the chamber knocks negatively charged electrons out of atoms in the gas, leaving behind positive ions. The electrons are pulled towards the positively charged wires. They collide with other atoms on the way, producing an avalanche of electrons and ions. The movement of these electrons and ions induces an electric pulse in the wires which is collected by fast electronics. The size of the pulse is proportional to the energy loss of the original particle.

Although a variety of solid-state and chemical methods for measuring radiation dose have been developed in recent decades and calorimetry can now provide an absolute standard of reference, ionization dosimetry retains its position as the most widely used, most convenient, and, in most situations, most accurate method of measuring either exposure or absorbed dose. The ionization chamber itself is the central element in this system of dosimetry. In this chapter the principles governing the construction and operation of ionization chambers of various types are examined. Since the ionization chambers now in general use are nearly all of commercial manufacture, the emphasis is on operating characteristics and interpretation of measurements rather than on details of construction, although some knowledge of the latter is often required when applying necessary corrections to the measured quantities. Examples are given of the construction of typical chambers designed for particular purposes, and the methods of calibrating them are discussed

Radiographic films based on silver halides are normally handled under red or orange safelights to prevent fogging due to their sensitivity to white light. The present invention relates to ultraviolet radiation sensitive material which can be handled under virtually white light without significant fogging. A photographic, chemically sensitised silver halide emulsion is described, containing 50-100 mole % of silver chloride, the higher the silver chloride content, the lower the visible light sensitivity. The remaining silver halide, if any, is silver bromide and/or silver iodide. The silver halide grains are grown in the presence of ammonia, an excess of chloride ions and tetraazaindene growth controller. Examples illustrating the invention are given. (U.K.)

An automated spark test system based on combining field emission and spark measurements, exploiting a discharging capacitor is investigated. In particular, the remaining charge on the capacitor is analytically solved assuming the field emitted current to follow the Fowler Nordheim expression. The latter allows for field emission measurements from pA to A currents, and spark detection by complete discharge of the capacitor. The measurement theory and experiments on Cu and W are discussed.

Was used in ISR (Intersecting Storage Ring) split field magnet experiment. Multi-wire detectors contain layers of positively and negatively charged wires enclosed in a chamber full of gas. A charged particle passing through the chamber knocks negatively charged electrons out of atoms in the gas, leaving behind positive ions. The electrons are pulled towards the positively charged wires. They collide with other atoms on the way, producing an avalanche of electrons and ions. The movement of these electrons and ions induces an electric pulse in the wires which is collected by fast electronics. The size of the pulse is proportional to the energy loss of the original particle.

Multi-wire detectors contain layers of positively and negatively charged wires enclosed in a chamber full of gas. A charged particle passing through the chamber knocks negatively charged electrons out of atoms in the gas, leaving behind positive ions. The electrons are pulled towards the positively charged wires. They collide with other atoms on the way, producing an avalanche of electrons and ions. The movement of these electrons and ions induces an electric pulse in the wires which is collected by fast electronics. The size of the pulse is proportional to the energy loss of the original particle.

Multi-wire detectors contain layers of positively and negatively charged wires enclosed in a chamber full of gas. A charged particle passing through the chamber knocks negatively charged electrons out of atoms in the gas, leaving behind positive ions. The electrons are pulled towards the positively charged wires. They collide with other atoms on the way, producing an avalanche of electrons and ions. The movement of these electrons and ions induces an electric pulse in the wires which is collected by fast electronics. The size of the pulse is proportional to the energy loss of the original particle.

Multi-wire detectors contain layers of positively and negatively charged wires enclosed in a chamber full of gas. A charged particle passing through the chamber knocks negatively charged electrons out of atoms in the gas, leaving behind positive ions. The electrons are pulled towards the positively charged wires. They collide with other atoms on the way, producing an avalanche of electrons and ions. The movement of these electrons and ions induces an electric pulse in the wires which is collected by fast electronics. The size of the pulse is proportional to the energy loss of the original particle.

The resistive plate chamber (RPC) has good time and position resolution; these factors (coupled to its simple construction) make it an attractive candidate for muon trigger systems at future colliders. However, operated in spark mode, the RPC has severe rate problems that make it unusable above 10 Hz/cm 2 . We have previously published our results concerning the operation of the RPC in spark and in avalanche mode; we have shown that the rate limit can be increased to 150 Hz/cm 2 if the RPC is operated in avalanche mode. Here, we discuss the performance of chambers with 6 and 8 mm gas gaps (compared to the more usual 2 mm gap). We outline the reasons for this choice, and also discuss anode versus cathode strip readout. We have measured the efficiency versus flux, and also show that an enhanced rate limit can be obtained if only a small region of the chamber is exposed to the beam (spot illumination). Finally we have tested the performance of chambers constructed with other materials for the resistiv e plate and compare it to chambers constructed with our preferred plastic, melamine laminate. (orig.)

In spite of some disatvantages photographic materials based on silver halides possess the outstanding feature of high sensitivity. So again and again special photographic materials have been developed for new techniques including information storage. This contribution reports on some special photographic materials and it briefly discusses some applications. Materials are discussed in detail for holography, carrier-frequency photography, producing masks for integrated circuits, recording equidensities, bubble chamber photography, and for neutron-radiography. (orig.) [de

Radiographic films based on silver halides are normally handled under red or orange safelights to prevent fogging due to their sensitivity to white light. The present invention relates to ultraviolet radiation sensitive material which can be handled under virtually white light without significant fogging. The film material is comprised of a base having at least one layer of a photographic silver halide emulsion and a yellow filter dye screening the emulsion from visible radiation. The silver halide emulsion contains 50-100 mole % of silver chloride, the higher the silver chloride content, the lower the visible light sensitivity. The nature and properties of the yellow filter dye are described. When recording an X-ray image, the film is loaded into the camera under white safelight conditions from which light of wavelength shorter than 400 nm is excluded. The film is in contact with one or more phosphor screens capable when struck by X-rays of emitting ultraviolet radiation, the screens having a peak ultraviolet emission within the wavelength range of 250-380 nm. After X-ray exposure, the film is removed and developed. Two examples illustrating the invention are given. (U.K.)

textabstractProfessor Robert Chambers is a Research Associate at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex (Brighton, UK), where he has been based for the last 40 years, including as Professorial Research Fellow. He became involved in the field of development management in the

A detailed understanding of the processes associated Midi spark ignition, as a first step during combustion, is of great importance fur clean operation of spark ignition engines. In the past 10 years. a growing concern for environmental protection, including low emission of pollutants, has increased

In the 1950s and 1960s, bubble and sparkchambers were the dominant experimental tools in high-energy physics. While sparkchambers were usually built and fitted to specific experiments, bubble chambers were constructed as general purpose devices that could be used for a variety of experiments. At CERN, the bubble chamber programme started under Charles Peyrou in the late 1950s. The first of CERN's bubble chambers, a 30 cm hydrogen chamber, is seen here being inserted into its vacuum tank. The HBC30, as it was called, took its first beam from the SC in 1959. One of the first pictures taken, of a positive pion-proton interaction, began a long series of pretty images for which bubble chambers would become famous. When it stopped operating in spring 1962, the HBC30 had consumed 150 km of film in its 3 years of operation.

Purpose: To miniaturize the storage tank of condensated water in BWR reactor. Constitution: A diaphragm is provided in a suppression chamber thereby to partition the same into an inner compartment and an outer compartment. In one of said compartments there is stored clean water to be used for feeding at the time of separating the reactor and for the core spray system, and in another compartment there is stored water necessary for accomplishing the depressurization effect at the time of coolant loss accident. To the compartment in which clean water is stored there is connected a water cleaning device for constantly maintaining water in clean state. As this cleaning device an already used fuel pool cleaning device can be utilized. Further, downcomers for accomplishing the depressurization function are provided in both inner compartment and outer compartment. The capacity of the storage tank can be reduced by the capacity of clean water within the suppression chamber. (Ikeda, J.)

A Spark Gap (Applied voltage : 2-8KV, Capacitor : 4 Micro F. Dia of the tube : 1 inch, Electrode distance : .3 ∼.5 inch) was made to generate a small size dynamic plasma. To measure the plasma density and temperature as a function of time and position, we installed and have been installing four detection systems - Mach-Zehnder type Interferometer for the plasma refractivity, Expansion speed detector using two He-Ne laser beams, Image Processing using Lens and A Optical-Fiber Array for Pointwise Radiation Sensing, Faraday Rotation of a Optical Fiber to measure the azimuthal component of B-field generated by the plasma drift. These systems was used for the wire explosion diagnostics, and can be used for the Laser driven plasma also

Full Text Available Performance of the spark ignition engines may be increased by changing the geometrical compression ratio according to the amount of charging in cylinders. The designed geometrical compression ratio can be realized as an effective compression ratio under the full load and full open throttle conditions since the effective compression ratio changes with the amount of charging into the cylinder in spark ignition engines. So, this condition of the spark ignition engines forces designers to change their geometrical compression ratio according to the amount of charging into the cylinder for improvement of performance and fuel economy. In order to improve the combustion efficiency, fuel economy, power output, exhaust emissions at partial loads, compression ratio must be increased; but, under high load and low speed conditions to prevent probable knock and hard running the compression ratio must be decreased gradually. In this paper, relation of the performance parameters to compression ratio such as power, torque, specific fuel consumption, cylindir pressure, exhaust gas temperature, combustion chamber surface area/volume ratio, thermal efficiency, spark timing etc. in spark ignition engines have been investigated and using of engines with variable compression ratio is suggested to fuel economy and more clear environment.

Full Text Available In the era of big data, Internet-based geospatial information services such as various LBS apps are deployed everywhere, followed by an increasing number of queries against the massive spatial data. As a result, the traditional relational spatial database (e.g., PostgreSQL with PostGIS and Oracle Spatial cannot adapt well to the needs of large-scale spatial query processing. Spark is an emerging outstanding distributed computing framework in the Hadoop ecosystem. This paper aims to address the increasingly large-scale spatial query-processing requirement in the era of big data, and proposes an effective framework GeoSpark SQL, which enables spatial queries on Spark. On the one hand, GeoSpark SQL provides a convenient SQL interface; on the other hand, GeoSpark SQL achieves both efficient storage management and high-performance parallel computing through integrating Hive and Spark. In this study, the following key issues are discussed and addressed: (1 storage management methods under the GeoSpark SQL framework, (2 the spatial operator implementation approach in the Spark environment, and (3 spatial query optimization methods under Spark. Experimental evaluation is also performed and the results show that GeoSpark SQL is able to achieve real-time query processing. It should be noted that Spark is not a panacea. It is observed that the traditional spatial database PostGIS/PostgreSQL performs better than GeoSpark SQL in some query scenarios, especially for the spatial queries with high selectivity, such as the point query and the window query. In general, GeoSpark SQL performs better when dealing with compute-intensive spatial queries such as the kNN query and the spatial join query.

The Big European Bubble Chamber (BEBC) was used to photograph the tracks left by particles as they passed through a heated liquid as it was expanded. When closed in 1984, 6.3 million photographs had been taken on 3000 km of film for 22 neutrino and hadron experiments using beams from the PS and SPS accelerators.

The AROMA-AIRWICK System for CHLOE, an automatic film scanning equipment built at Argonne by Donald Hodges, and the CDC-3600 computer is a system for the automatic identification of spark images and their association into tracks. AROMA-AIRWICK has been an outgrowth of the generally recognized need for the automatic processing of high energy physics data and the fact that the Argonne National Laboratory has been a center of serious sparkchamber development in recent years

This image is of real particle tracks taken from the CERN 2 m liquid hydrogen bubble chamber and shows the production and decay of a negative omega particle. A negative kaon enters the chamber which decays into many particles, including a negative omega that travels a short distance before decaying into more particles. The invention of bubble chambers in 1952 revolutionized the field of particle physics, allowing real tracks left by particles to be seen and photographed by expanding liquid that had been heated to boiling point.

Three realizations of gas multiplication detectors are presented in the field of multiwire chambers. Le 'NEUTRINO' experiment is intended for investigating neutrino interactions at energies as high as possible with using drift chambers. The 'LEZARD' experiment is intended for investigating lepton and hadron production at high transverse momentum in hadron-nucleon collisions up to the higher energies attainable at SPS (use of a multiwire proportional chamber), the apparatus has the performance of a spectrometer. A sparkchamber equipped with memories has been developed for controlling bubble chamber experiments. Emphasis is put on the evolution towards detectors associated with 'another thing' to obtain a more specific operation: such as the plasma memory and sparkchamber association, some possible association with function gaps is pointed out (delay function, homothetic function) [fr

The later time phase of electrical breakdown in water is investigated for the purpose of improving understanding of the discharge characteristics. One dimensional simulations in addition to a zero dimensional lumped model are used to study the spark discharge. The goal is to provide better electrical models for water switches used in the pulse compression section of pulsed power systems. It is found that temperatures in the discharge channel under representative drive conditions, and assuming small initial radii from earlier phases of development, reach levels that are as much as an order of magnitude larger than those used to model discharges in atmospheric gases. This increased temperature coupled with a more rapidly rising conductivity with temperature than in air result in a decreased resistance characteristic compared to preceding models. A simple modification is proposed for the existing model to enable the approximate calculation of channel temperature and incorporate the resulting conductivity increase into the electrical circuit for the discharge channel. Comparisons are made between the theoretical predictions and recent experiments at Sandia. Although present and past experiments indicated that preceding late time channel models overestimated channel resistance, the calculations in this report seem to underestimate the resistance relative to recent experiments. Some possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed.

Heavy ion beam transport through the containment chamber plays a crucial role in all heavy ion fusion (HIF) scenarios. Here, several parameters are used to characterize the operating space for HIF beams; transport modes are assessed in relation to evolving target/accelerator requirements; results of recent relevant experiments and simulations of HIF transport are summarized; and relevant instabilities are reviewed. All transport options still exist, including (1) vacuum ballistic transport, (2) neutralized ballistic transport, and (3) channel-like transport. Presently, the European HIF program favors vacuum ballistic transport, while the US HIF program favors neutralized ballistic transport with channel-like transport as an alternate approach. Further transport research is needed to clearly guide selection of the most attractive, integrated HIF system

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The Glacier Photograph Collection is a database of photographs of glaciers from around the world, some dating back to the mid-1850's, that provide an historical...

The glove-box dismantling facility in the Plutonium Fuel Production Facility is developed to dismantle after-service glove-boxes with remote-controlled devices such as an arm-type manipulator. An abrasive wheel cutter, which is used to size reduce the gloveboxes, generates sparks during operation. This dispersing spark was a problem from the fire prevention point of view. A suitable spark control measures for this operation were required. We developed panels to minimize spark dispersion, shields to prevent the income of sparks to the pre-filter, and incombustible pre-filters. The equipment was tested and effectiveness was confirmed. This report provides the results of these tests. (author)

Modelica is an object-oriented acausal modeling language that is well positioned to become a de-facto standard for expressing models of complex physical systems. To simulate a model expressed in Modelica, it needs to be translated into executable code. For generating run-time efficient code, such a translation needs to employ algebraic formula manipulations. As the SPARK solver has been shown to be competitive for generating such code but currently cannot be used with the Modelica language, we report in this paper how SPARK's symbolic and numerical algorithms can be implemented in OpenModelica, an open-source implementation of a Modelica modeling and simulation environment. We also report benchmark results that show that for our air flow network simulation benchmark, the SPARK solver is competitive with Dymola, which is believed to provide the best solver for Modelica.

The Hadoop ecosystem is the leading opensource platform for distributed storing and processing big data. It is a very popular system for implementing data warehouses and data lakes. Spark has also emerged to be one of the leading engines for data analytics. The Hadoop platform is available at CERN as a central service provided by the IT department. By attending the session, a participant will acquire knowledge of the essential concepts need to benefit from the parallel data processing offered by Spark framework. The session is structured around practical examples and tutorials. Main topics: Architecture overview - work distribution, concepts of a worker and a driver Computing concepts of transformations and actions Data processing APIs - RDD, DataFrame, and SparkSQL

Apache Spark is amazing when everything clicks. But if you haven’t seen the performance improvements you expected, or still don’t feel confident enough to use Spark in production, this practical book is for you. Authors Holden Karau and Rachel Warren demonstrate performance optimizations to help your Spark queries run faster and handle larger data sizes, while using fewer resources. Ideal for software engineers, data engineers, developers, and system administrators working with large-scale data applications, this book describes techniques that can reduce data infrastructure costs and developer hours. Not only will you gain a more comprehensive understanding of Spark, you’ll also learn how to make it sing. With this book, you’ll explore: How Spark SQL’s new interfaces improve performance over SQL’s RDD data structure The choice between data joins in Core Spark and Spark SQL Techniques for getting the most out of standard RDD transformations How to work around performance issues i...

We analyse the combustion process in a spark ignition engine using the experimental data of an internal pressure during the combustion process and show that the system can be driven to chaotic behaviour. Our conclusion is based on the observation of unperiodicity in the time series, suitable stroboscopic maps and a complex structure of a reconstructed strange attractor. This analysis can explain that in some circumstances the level of noise in spark ignition engines increases considerably due to nonlinear dynamics of a combustion process

A multi-chambered ionisation detector enables the amount of radiation entering each chamber from a single radioactive, eg β, source to be varied by altering the proportion of the source protruding into each chamber. Electrodes define chambers and an extended radioactive source is movable to alter the source length in each chamber. Alternatively, the source is fixed relative to outer electrodes but the central electrode may be adjusted by an attached support altering the chamber dimensions and hence the length of source in each. Also disclosed are a centrally mounted source tiltable towards one or other chamber and a central electrode tiltable to alter chamber dimensions. (U.K.)

The maximum discharge spark length of a Van de Graaf generator as a function of belt speed was studied. It was found that the maximum spark length was proportional to the square root of the belt speed.

Full Text Available The maximum discharge spark length of a Van de Graaf generator as a function of belt speed was studied. It was found that the maximum spark length was proportional to the square root of the belt speed.

Full Text Available The study critically explored how a PASCO-designed technology (SPARK ScienceLearning System is meaningfully integrated into the teaching of selected topics in Earth and Environmental Science. It highlights on modelling the effectiveness of using the SPARK Learning System as a primary tool in learning science that leads to learning and achievement of the students. Data and observation gathered and correlation of the ability of the technology to develop high intrinsic motivation to student achievement were used to design framework on how to meaningfully integrate SPARK ScienceLearning System in teaching Earth and Environmental Science. Research instruments used in this study were adopted from standardized questionnaires available from literature. Achievement test and evaluation form were developed and validated for the purpose of deducing data needed for the study. Interviews were done to delve into the deeper thoughts and emotions of the respondents. Data from the interviews served to validate all numerical data culled from this study. Cross-case analysis of the data was done to reveal some recurring themes, problems and benefits derived by the students in using the SPARK Science Learning System to further establish its effectiveness in the curriculum as a forerunner to the shift towards the 21st Century Learning.

characteristics 5. Computational Predictions Both 2D and 3D time-dependent Navier -Stokes calculations of the SparkJet operation have been conducted using the...single sheet of stainless steel shim stock . This metal structure is oriented vertically and clamped at the top and bottom in a Lexan® fixture. The

Full Text Available In the present research, we study a possibility of using the electric spark erosion method as an alternative to the method of chemical co-precipitation for preparation of magnetic nanoparticles. Initiation of high frequency electric discharge between coarse iron particles under a layer of distilled water allows obtaining pure magnetite nanoparticles.

In the present research, we study a possibility of using the electric spark erosion method as an alternative to the method of chemical co-precipitation for preparation of magnetic nanoparticles. Initiation of high frequency electric discharge between coarse iron particles under a layer of distilled water allows obtaining pure magnetite nanoparticles.

In the present research, we study a possibility of using the electric spark erosion method as an alternative to the method of chemical co-precipitation for preparation of magnetic nanoparticles. Initiation of high frequency electric discharge between coarse iron particles under a layer of distilled water allows obtaining pure magnetite nanoparticles.

Safe Haven (2010) is a novel written by Nicholas Sparks. It is a story about a woman who suffers from traumatic experience due to her abusive husband. She manages to escape to a safe place and find happiness in that place. The woman wants to start a new life even though the shadow of the past will always haunt her.

Spark discharge is a method for producing nanoparticles from conductive materials. Besides the general advantages of nanoparticle synthesis in the gas phase, the method offers additional advantages like simplicity, compactness and versatility. The synthesis process is continuous and is performed at

The development of Micro-Pattern Gaseous Detectors for high luminosity experiments requires a better understanding of the origin of the sparks in these detectors. Assuming a spark occurs whenever the electron number reaches the well known Raether limit, previous Geant4 simulations quantitatively reproduced the spark rate observed in Micromegas with high energy hadron beams. Large release of energies are provided by fragments from nuclear interactions between the beam and the detector material. In order to further check the validity of our simulation, hadron beam tests have been performed at the CERN/SPS and PS on Micromegas and hybrid Micromegas-GEM detectors. In particular, large variations of the spark rate have been observed in positively charged hadron beams below 1 GeV/c, which are well described by the simulation. The role of the charge density has also been investigated with measurements in magnetic fields and with a Micromegas-GEM. The simulation has therefore been upgraded to take into account the tr...

The causes of serious metallic melting and denting due to discharges in the insulating gas of the Daresbury tandem are examined. In order to explain the melting, high oscillating currents have to flow in the spark channels, and those can only be expected when return strokes excite local electromagnetic modes at the site of the origin of breakdown. In the case of intershield to tank sparks, evidence that magnetic confinement of the spark channel produces denting is presented. A model which accounts for the differences between sparks at Oak Ridge and sparks at Daresbury is also presented. (author)

An environmental chamber is described which enables an operator's hands to have direct access within the chamber without compromising a special atmosphere within such chamber. A pair of sleeves of a flexible material are sealed to the chamber around associated access apertures and project outwardly from such chamber. Each aperture is closed by a door which is openable from within the sleeve associated therewith so that upon an operator inserting his hand and arm through the sleeve, the operator can open the door to have access to the interior of the chamber. A container which is selectively separable from the remainder of the chamber is also provided to allow objects to be transferred from the chamber without such objects having to pass through the ambient atmosphere. An antechamber permitting objects to be passed directly into the chamber from the ambient atmosphere is included. (auth)

We devised a convenient method of measuring anterior chamber volume in man. Photographs of the anterior chamber were taken with a Zeiss photographic slit lamp with a Polaroid attachment, and measured with a specially constructed transparent scale. Using this method, the standard deviation of individual measurements of volume on different occasions in a given eye was 8 microliter. The standard deviation of the differences between right and left eyes of normal subjects was 10 microliter. The volume of the anterior chamber measured in 78 eyes of 39 normal subjects (mean age, 28 years; range, 19 to 56 years) was found to be 209 +/- 37 microliter (mean +/- SD). We observed a small negative correlation between the age of the subject and the volume of the anterior chamber.

Full Text Available Combustion of the lean mixtures in the spark ignition engines provides higher thermal efficiency compared to the combustion of the stoichiometric mixture but is more restrictive to the ignition systems. Due to the limitations of conventional ignition systems, advanced concepts are being used, e. g. spark-jet ignition. Presented research has been carried to determine: 1. The impact of fuel injection pressure on the velocity of mixture formation, 2. Fuel distribution inside ignition chamber in defined phases of chamber filling, 3. Influence of chamber back-pressure on gas jet development. Investigations have been carried using the ignition chamber providing optical access. The visualization has been done with Schlieren-method with “Z”-setup basing on two ϕ = 150 mm parabolic mirrors. Images have been recorded with LaVision HSS5 camera with CMOS transducer. The paper contains a comparison of gas penetration parameters for a different injection pressures and chamber backpressures. The injection into the quasi-static air has been compared to the injection in dynamic conditions. It is stated, that both injection pressure and chamber back-pressure influence gas jet-development in the ignition chamber. The regions of the chamber with increased swirling and therefore providing more efficient micromixing have been identified.

The characteristics of a miniature vacuum spark device are investigated. It is powered by a 2-stage 50 kV Marx and operated without an external triggering source. Discharge initiation is effected by an electron beam produced by the Pseudospark effect behind the hollow cathode. For discharges performed in air at a pressure of below 10-2 mbar, intense X-ray is detected. Although this X-ray has been found to consist of predominantly the Fe-Kα line produced by the electron beam bombardment of the stainless steel anode, its high intensity, singly-pulsed short-duration temporal structure and nearly monochromatic spectrum make the present vacuum spark an ideal pulsed X-ray source for many applications. The device is also compact, low cost and easy to operate. As an example of its applications, the contact radiography of a living lizard has been obtained using this X-ray source.

Characteristics of spark mass spectrometers (ion source, properties of the ion beam, ion optics, and performance) and their use in qualitative and quantitative analysis are described. This technique is very interesting for the semi-quantitative analysis of trace amounts, down to 10 -8 atoms. Examples of applications such as the analysis of high purity materials and non-conducting mineral samples, and determination of carbon and gas trace amounts are presented. (50 references) [fr

This manual describes the input required to use Version 1.1 of the SPARK computer code. SPARK 1.1 is a library of FORTRAN main programs and subprograms designed to calculate eddy currents on conducting surfaces where current flow is assumed zero in the direction normal to the surface. Surfaces are modeled with triangular and/or quadrilateral elements. Lorentz forces produced by the interaction of eddy currents with background magnetic fields can be output at element nodes in a form compatible with most structural analysis codes. In addition, magnetic fields due to eddy currents can be determined at points off the surface. Version 1.1 features eddy current streamline plotting with optional hidden-surface-removal graphics and topological enhancements that allow essentially any orientable surface to be modeled. SPARK also has extensive symmetry specification options. In order to make the manual as self-contained as possible, six appendices are included that present summaries of the symmetry options, topological options, coil options and code algorithms, with input and output examples. An edition of SPARK 1.1 is available on the Cray computers at the National Magnetic Fusion Energy Computer Center at Livermore, California. Another more generic edition is operational on the VAX computers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and is available on magnetic tape by request. The generic edition requires either the GKS or PLOT10 graphics package and the IMSL or NAG mathematical package. Requests from outside the United States will be subject to applicable federal regulations regarding dissemination of computer programs. 22 refs

Dual ionization chambers are provided for use with an electronic smoke detector. The chambers are separated by electrically-conductive partition. A single radiation source extends through the partition into both chambers, ionizing the air in each. The mid-point current of the device may be balanced by adjusting the position of the source

There is great interest in exploiting the opportunity provided by cloud computing platforms for large-scale analytics. Among these platforms, Apache Spark is growing in popularity for machine learning and graph analytics. Developing efficient complex analytics in Spark requires deep understanding of both the algorithm at hand and the Spark API or subsystem APIs (e.g., Spark SQL, GraphX). Our BigDatalog system addresses the problem by providing concise declarative specification of complex queries amenable to efficient evaluation. Towards this goal, we propose compilation and optimization techniques that tackle the important problem of efficiently supporting recursion in Spark. We perform an experimental comparison with other state-of-the-art large-scale Datalog systems and verify the efficacy of our techniques and effectiveness of Spark in supporting Datalog-based analytics.

Constituents of solutions identified in situ. Liquid-arc/spark-excitation atomic-emission spectroscopy (LAES) is experimental variant of atomic-emission spectroscopy in which electric arc or spark established in liquid and spectrum of light from arc or spark analyzed to identify chemical elements in liquid. Observations encourage development of LAES equipment for online monitoring of process streams in such industries as metal plating, electronics, and steel, and for online monitoring of streams affecting environment.

This paper discusses the business strategy needed to spark investment in Ontario's power generation industry. It examines the process of decision making and investing in an uncertain environment. The paper suggests that any strategy based on one view of the future courts trouble and that strategic flexibility can prepare for what cannot be predicted. Finally the paper suggests that Ontario needs to create a stable policy and regulatory environment that allows investors to fulfill reasonable expectations and investors need to place bets that provide the flexibility to respond quickly to changing market conditions

Aiming at the real-time application of collaborative filtering employment recommendation algorithm (CF), a clustering collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm (CCF) is developed, which applies hierarchical clustering to CF and narrows the query range of neighbour items. In addition, to solve the cold-start problem of content-based recommendation algorithm (CB), a content-based algorithm with users’ information (CBUI) is introduced for job recommendation. Furthermore, a hybrid recommendation algorithm (HRA) which combines CCF and CBUI algorithms is proposed, and implemented on Spark platform. The experimental results show that HRA can overcome the problems of cold start and data sparsity, and achieve good recommendation accuracy and scalability for employment recommendation.

As the 100th anniversary of the 1915 Welch-Rose report approaches, the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) has been pursuing two initiatives to spark innovation in academic partnerships for enhancing population health: (1) Framing the Future: The Second 100 Years of Education for Public Health and (2) Reconnecting Public Health and Care Delivery to Improve the Health of Populations. We describe how ASPPH-member schools and programs accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health, along with their extraordinarily diverse array of partners, are working to improve education that better prepares health professionals to meet 21st-century population health needs. PMID:25706017

The Micro Pixel Chamber (μ-PIC) is being developed a sacandidate for the muon system of the ATLAS detector for upgrading in LHC experiments. The μ-PIC is a micro-pattern gaseous detector that doesn’t have ﬂoating structure such as wires, mesh, or foil. This detector can be made by printed-circuit-board (PCB) technology, which is commercially available and suited for mass production. Operation tests have been performed under high ﬂux neutrons under similar conditions to the ATLAS cavern. Spark rates are measured using several gas mixtures under 7 MeV neutron irradiation, and good properties were observed using neon, ethane, and CF4 mixture of gases.Using resistive materials as electrodes, we are also developing a new μ-PIC, which is not expected to damage the electrodes in the case of discharge sparks.

Direct analysis of non-conducting solids and dielectric surface layers for elements at trace levels has been shown to be feasible by the new so-called sliding-spark spectroscopy, in which a discharge plasma is bound by, and propagates on, the surface of a dielectric sample matrix. By using a river sediment as a model matrix, bound in PVC to improve elemental atomization and excitation efficiency, as a result of the formation of volatile chlorides, the potential of the technique for environmental applications has been investigated by studying the characteristic UV-visible radiation emitted in the wavelength range 210-510 nm for the elements Fe, Cr, Ni, Cu, Pb, Cd, Zn, Co, V, Ti, and Mn. The radiation was detected by means of a CCD spectrometer and analysed for spectral line identification, selection, and the linearity of the spectral response, to determine whether this was suitable for establishing a calibration strategy for quantitative analysis using the sliding-spark source.

In its first five years, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI) sponsored more than 400 undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students in internships and research positions (Wyse 2012). In the past seven years, the NGSI program has, and continues to produce a large body of scientific, technical, and policy work in targeted core safeguards capabilities and human capital development activities. Not only does the NGSI program carry out activities across multiple disciplines, but also across all U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)/NNSA locations in the United States. However, products are not readily shared among disciplines and across locations, nor are they archived in a comprehensive library. Rather, knowledge of NGSI-produced literature is localized to the researchers, clients, and internal laboratory/facility publication systems such as the Electronic Records and Information Capture Architecture (ERICA) at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). There is also no incorporated way of analyzing existing NGSI literature to determine whether the larger NGSI program is achieving its core safeguards capabilities and activities. A complete library of NGSI literature could prove beneficial to a cohesive, sustainable, and more economical NGSI program. The Safeguards Platform for Automated Retrieval of Knowledge (SPARK) has been developed to be a knowledge storage, retrieval, and analysis capability to capture safeguards knowledge to exist beyond the lifespan of NGSI. During the development process, it was necessary to build a SPARK training dataset (a corpus of documents) for initial entry into the system and for demonstration purposes. We manipulated these data to gain new information about the breadth of NGSI publications, and they evaluated the science-policy interface at PNNL as a practical demonstration of SPARK’s intended analysis capability. The analysis demonstration sought to answer the

Since many people tend to use photographs as memory anchors, this author decided she wanted to know whether the process of capturing and manipulating an image taken during a learning activity would act as a memory anchor for children's visual, auditory and kinaesthetic memories linked to their cognitive learning at the time. In plain English,…

Chambers of this type were initially developed within the Alpha project (finally not approved). They were designed such to minimize the radiation length with a view to a mass spectrometer of high resolution meant to replace the Omega detector. The chambers were clearly forerunners for the (drift) chambers later built for R606 with the novel technique of crimping the wires. See also photo 7510039X.

Dedicated to a complete presentation on all aspects of reverberation chambers, this book provides the physical principles behind these test systems in a very progressive manner. The detailed panorama of parameters governing the operation of electromagnetic reverberation chambers details various applications such as radiated immunity, emissivity, and shielding efficiency experiments.In addition, the reader is provided with the elements of electromagnetic theory and statistics required to take full advantage of the basic operational rules of reverberation chambers, including calibration proc

Both the electrostatic and the electromagnetic properties of the proposed Pestov Spark counter for the CERN-LHC experiment ALICE were calculated employing the HF simulation package MAFIA. The simulations helped to design a frontend readout board of high bandwidth for the transmission of the very fast signal induced by the spark to the frontend electronics.

and manufacturing of spark ignition engines with improved performance. Understanding factors influencing knock in spark ignition engines will help designers understand how to manage knock in engines. Various designs over the years have been introduced in internal combustion engines with the aim of improving.

The high-voltage (HV) electrodes of neutral beam sources (NBS's) must be protected from occasional sparks to ground. Spark currents can be limited with special transformers and reactors which introduce time delays that are long enough to quench the spark or to disconnect the energy source. A saturated time delay transformer (STDT) connected in series with the HV power supply detects spark faults and limits the current supplied by the power supply and its capacitance to ground; it also initiates spark quenching. Nonsaturated, longitudinal reactors limit the discharge current supplied by the energy stored in the circuit capacitance of the NBS filament and arc power supplies long enough to discharge this capacitance into a resistor. The design principles of these protective circuits are presented in this paper

The high-voltage (HV) electrodes of neutral beam sources (NBS's) must be protected from occasional sparks to ground. Spark currents can be limited with special transformers and reactors which introduce time delays that are long enough to quench the spark or to disconnect the energy source. A saturated time delay transformer (STDT) connected in series with the HV power supply detects spark faults and limits the current supplied by the power supply and its capacitance to ground; it also initiates spark quenching. Nonsaturated, longitudinal reactors limit the discharge current supplied by the energy stored in the circuit capacitance of the NBS filament and arc power supplies long enough to discharge this capacitance into a resistor. The design principles of these protective circuits are presented

National Aeronautics and Space Administration — The SMEX03 Site Photographs data set includes photographs of the regional study areas of Alabama, Georgia, and Oklahoma, USA as part of the 2003 Soil Moisture...

Do your beginning photographic students ever wonder why photographic paper reacts the way it does? One way that this question can be answered is by making a photogram. Article explained the steps necessary for making a photogram. (Author/RK)

The present paper concentrates on the characteristics of the pseudospark switch (PSS) designed in a previous work. The special characteristics of PSS make it a replacement for other high voltage switches such as thyratrons and ordinary high-pressure spark gaps. PSS is characterized by short rise time and small jitter time. The pseudo park chamber consists of two hollow cylindrical electrodes made of a stainless steel material (type 306L) separated by an insulator. The insulator used in our design is a glazed ceramic 70 mm in diameter and 3.5 mm in thickness. A PSS with an anode voltage of 29.2 kV, and a current of 3.6 kA and 11 ns rise time was achieved and used successfully at a repetition rate of about 2.2 kHz. A simple trigger circuit designed, built, and used effectively reaching more than 1.56 kV trigger pulse which is sufficient to ignite the argon gas inside the cathode to cause a breakdown. A non-inductive dummy load is designed to be a new technique to find the accurate value of the PSS inductance. A jitter time of ±10 ns pulses is observed to occur in a reliable manner for more than 6 h of continuous operation. In this research, the important parameters of this switch like rise time, peak current, and anode voltage were studied at various values of charging capacitance. The lifetime of this system is depending on the kind of the electrode material and on the type of insulation material in the main gap of the pseudospark switch.

Highlights: ► PPC combustion combined with spark assistance and gasoline fuel on a CI engine. ► Chemiluminescence of different chemical species describes the progress of combustion reaction. ► Spectra of a novel combustion mode under SACI conditions is described. ► UV–Visible spectrometry, high speed imaging and pressure diagnostic were employed for analysis. - Abstract: Nowadays many research efforts are focused on the study and development of new combustion modes, mainly based on the use of locally lean air–fuel mixtures. This characteristic, combined with exhaust gas recirculation, provides low combustion temperatures that reduces pollutant formation and increases efficiency. However these combustion concepts have some drawbacks, related to combustion phasing control, which must be overcome. In this way, the use of a spark plug has shown to be a good solution to improve phasing control in combination with lean low temperature combustion. Its performance is well reported on bibliography, however phenomena involving the combustion process are not completely described. The aim of the present work is to develop a detailed description of the spark assisted compression ignition mode by means of application of UV–Visible spectrometry, in order to improve insight on the combustion process. Tests have been performed in an optical engine by means of broadband radiation imaging and emission spectrometry. The engine hardware is typical of a compression ignition passenger car application. Gasoline was used as the fuel due to its low reactivity. Combining broadband luminosity images with pressure-derived heat-release rate and UV–Visible spectra, it was possible to identify different stages of the combustion reaction. After the spark discharge, a first flame kernel appears and starts growing as a premixed flame front, characterized by a low and constant heat-release rate in combination with the presence of remarkable OH radical radiation. Heat release increases

Full Text Available The design and calibration of an ergometer for exercising subjects during calorimetric studies in the climate chamber, are described. The ergometer is built into the climatic chamber and forms an integral part of the whole instrumentation system foe...

Looking up into the interior of BEBC bubble chamber from the expansion cylinder. At the top of the chamber two fish-eye lenses are installed and three other fish-eye ports are blanked off. In the centre is a heat exchanger.

A document discusses a simulation chamber that represents a shift from the thermal-vacuum chamber stereotype. This innovation, currently in development, combines the capabilities of space simulation chambers, the user-friendliness of modern-day electronics, and the modularity of plug-and-play computing. The Mobile Chamber is a customized test chamber that can be deployed with great ease, and is capable of bringing payloads at temperatures down to 20 K, in high vacuum, and with the desired metrology instruments integrated to the systems control. Flexure plans to lease Mobile Chambers, making them affordable for smaller budgets and available to a larger customer base. A key feature of this design will be an Apple iPad-like user interface that allows someone with minimal training to control the environment inside the chamber, and to simulate the required extreme environments. The feedback of thermal, pressure, and other measurements is delivered in a 3D CAD model of the chamber's payload and support hardware. This GUI will provide the user with a better understanding of the payload than any existing thermal-vacuum system.

The time projection chamber is inserted inside the central detector of the DELPHI experiment. Gas is ionised in the chamber as a charged particle passes through, producing an electric signal from which the path of the particle can be found. DELPHI, which ran from 1989 to 2000 on the LEP accelerator, was primarily concerned with particle identification.

High speed photography is an excellent source of engineering data but only provides a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional event. Multiple cameras can be used to provide data for the third dimension but camera locations are not always available. A solution to this problem is to overlay three-dimensional CAD/CAM models of the hardware being tested onto a film or photographic image, allowing the engineer to measure surface distances, relative motions between components, and surface variations.

Fabrication of laser fusion targets requires a number of special techniques. We have developed both laser and spark erosion machining to produce minute parts of complex targets. A high repetition rate YAG laser at double frequency is used to etch various materials. For example, marks or patterns are often necessary on structured or advanced targets. The laser is also used to thin down plastic coated stalks. A spark erosion system has proved to be a versatile tool and we describe current fabrication processes like cutting, drilling, and ultra precise machining. Spark erosion has interesting features for target fabrication: it is a highly controllable and reproducible technique as well as relatively inexpensive

OPAL was one of the four experiments installed at the LEP particle accelerator from 1989 - 2000. OPAL's central tracking system consists of (in order of increasing radius) a silicon microvertex detector, a vertex detector, a jet chamber, and z-chambers. All the tracking detectors work by observing the ionization of atoms by charged particles passing by: when the atoms are ionized, electrons are knocked out of their atomic orbitals, and are then able to move freely in the detector. These ionization electrons are detected in the dirfferent parts of the tracking system. This piece is a prototype of the jet chambers

A wire chamber used at CERN's Proton Synchrotron accelerator in the 1970s. Multi-wire detectors contain layers of positively and negatively charged wires enclosed in a chamber full of gas. A charged particle passing through the chamber knocks negatively charged electrons out of atoms in the gas, leaving behind positive ions. The electrons are pulled towards the positively charged wires. They collide with other atoms on the way, producing an avalanche of electrons and ions. The movement of these electrons and ions induces an electric pulse in the wires which is collected by fast electronics. The size of the pulse is proportional to the energy loss of the original particle.

A system for time-discretized spectroscopic measurements of the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) emission from spark discharges in the 60-160 nm range has been developed for the study of early plasma-forming phenomena. The system induces a spark discharge in an environment close to atmospheric conditions created using a high speed puff value, but is otherwise kept at high vacuum to allow for the propagation of VUV light. Using a vertical slit placed 1.5 mm from the discharge the emission from a small cross section of the discharge is allowed to pass into the selection chamber consisting of a spherical grating, with 1200 grooves/mm, and an exit slit set to 100 μm. Following the exit slit is a photomultiplier tube with a sodium salicylate scintillator that is used for the time discretized measurement of the VUV signal with a temporal resolution limit of 10 ns. Results from discharges studied in dry air, Nitrogen, SF{sub 6}, and Argon indicate the emission of light with wavelengths shorter than 120 nm where the photon energy begins to approach the regime of direct photoionization.

A miniature ionization chamber having a gas-filled housing which accommodates a guard electrode made in the form of a hollow perforated cylinder is described. The cylinder is electrically associated with the intermediate coaxial conductor of a triaxial cable used as the lead-in of the ionization chamber. The gas-filled housing of the ionization chamber also accommodates a collecting electrode shaped as a rod electrically connected to the center conductor of the cable and to tubular members. The rod is disposed internally of the guard electrode and is electrically connected, by means of jumpers passing through the holes in the guard electrode, to the tubular members. The tubular members embrace the guard electrode and are spaced a certain distance apart along its entire length. Arranged intermediate of these tubular members are spacers secured to the guard electrode and fixing the collecting electrode throughout its length with respect to the housing of the ionization chamber

The Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is the main device in the ALICE 'central barrel' for the tracking and identification (PID) of charged particles. It has to cope with unprecedented densities of charges particles.

This chamber is now in the National Museum of History and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA, where it was exposed in an exhibit on the History of High Energy Accelerators (1977).

Recording biological signals inside a hyperbaric chamber poses technical challenges (the steel walls enclosing it greatly attenuate or completely block the signals as in a Faraday cage), practical (lengthy cables creating eddy currents), and safety (sparks hazard from power supply to the electronic apparatus inside the chamber) which can be overcome with new wireless technologies. In this technical report we present the design and implementation of a Bluetooth system for electroencephalographic (EEG) recording inside a hyperbaric chamber and describe the feasibility of EEG signal transmission outside the chamber. Differently from older systems, this technology allows the online recording of amplified signals, without interference from eddy currents. In an application of this technology, we measured EEG activity in professional divers under three experimental conditions in a hyperbaric chamber to determine how oxygen, assumed at a constant hyperbaric pressure of 2.8 ATA , affects the bioelectrical activity. The EEG spectral power estimated by fast Fourier transform and the cortical sources of the EEG rhythms estimated by low-resolution brain electromagnetic analysis were analyzed in three different EEG acquisitions: breathing air at sea level; breathing oxygen at a simulated depth of 18 msw, and breathing air at sea level after decompression.

In the present paper the working principles of a gridded ionization chamber are given, and all the different factors that determine its resolution power are analyzed in detail. One of these devices, built in the Physics Division of the JEN and designed specially for use in measurements of alpha spectroscopy, is described. finally the main applications, in which the chamber can be used, are shown. (Author) 17 refs

We present an evaluation of the performance of a Spark implementation of a classification algorithm in the domain of High Energy Physics (HEP). Spark is a general engine for in-memory, large-scale data processing, and is designed for applications where similar repeated analysis is performed on the same large data sets. Classification problems are one of the most common and critical data processing tasks across many domains. Many of these data processing tasks are both computation- and data-intensive, involving complex numerical computations employing extremely large data sets. We evaluated the performance of the Spark implementation on Cori, a NERSC resource, and compared the results to an untuned MPI implementation of the same algorithm. While the Spark implementation scaled well, it is not competitive in speed to our MPI implementation, even when using significantly greater computational resources.

Full Text Available The conclusions drawn from this presentation are that Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) of equiatomic BE TiPt powder produces fully sintered specimens, with incomplete homogenisation. There is a need for improved furnace atmosphere control so...

A replacement spark plug for reciprocating internal combustion engines that functions as a fuel injector and as a spark plug to provide a "stratified-charge" effect. The conventional carburetor is retained to supply the main fuel-air mixture which may be very lean because of the stratified charge. The replacement plug includes a cylindrical piezoelectric ceramic which contracts to act as a pump whenever an ignition pulse is applied to a central rod through the ceramic. The rod is hollow at its upper end for receiving fuel, it is tapered along its lower length to act as a pump, and it is flattened at its lower end to act as a valve for fuel injection from the pump into the cylinder. The rod also acts as the center electrode of the plug, with the spark jumping from the plug base to the lower end of the rod to thereby provide spark ignition that has inherent proper timing with the fuel injection.

A chemical reaction chamber system that combines devices such as doped polysilicon for heating, bulk silicon for convective cooling, and thermoelectric (TE) coolers to augment the heating and cooling rates of the reaction chamber or chambers. In addition the system includes non-silicon-based reaction chambers such as any high thermal conductivity material used in combination with a thermoelectric cooling mechanism (i.e., Peltier device). The heat contained in the thermally conductive part of the system can be used/reused to heat the device, thereby conserving energy and expediting the heating/cooling rates. The system combines a micromachined silicon reaction chamber, for example, with an additional module/device for augmented heating/cooling using the Peltier effect. This additional module is particularly useful in extreme environments (very hot or extremely cold) where augmented heating/cooling would be useful to speed up the thermal cycling rates. The chemical reaction chamber system has various applications for synthesis or processing of organic, inorganic, or biochemical reactions, including the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and/or other DNA reactions, such as the ligase chain reaction.

tool for reading the net-work of images. The case is two visitor snapshots at the photographic exhibition, ‘The Story of Soweto’, in the famous Regina Mundi Church in Soweto, South Africa. I demonstrate that, when slightly adjusted for research engaging with visual materials, Latourian concepts......Inspired by actor-network theory (ANT), this article develops a theoretical framework to grasp the dynamic visual work of memory. It introduces three sensitizing concepts of actor-network methodology, namely entanglement, relationality and traceability, and operationalizes them in a methodological...

Inspired by actor-network theory (ANT), this article develops a theoretical framework to grasp the dynamic visual work of memory. It introduces three sensitizing concepts of actor-network methodology, namely entanglement, relationality and traceability, and operationalizes them in a methodological...... tool for reading the net-work of images. The case is two visitor snapshots at the photographic exhibition, ‘The Story of Soweto’, in the famous Regina Mundi Church in Soweto, South Africa. I demonstrate that, when slightly adjusted for research engaging with visual materials, Latourian concepts...... are indeed productive for analyzing visual material and visual practices of memorial sites....

The present paper aims to evaluate the phenomena of normal combustion and knocking in a single cylinder, ported fuel injection, four-stroke spark-ignition engine with a four-valve production head. All the measurements were realized in an optically accessible engine equipped with a wide quartz window in the bottom of the chamber. The study was carried out using optical techniques based on flame natural emission imaging and spectroscopy from UV to visible. Radical species such as OH and HCO were detected and correlated to the onset and the duration of knock and presence of hot-spots in end-gas. Measurements were carried out at 1000 rpm with wide-open throttle and stoichiometric mixture. Pure iso-octane, suitable mixtures of iso-octane and n-heptane and commercial gasoline were used

As part of the LAA project at CERN a prototype of a streamer-chamber in which a blade, instead of a wire, is used as the amplification electrode has been built. A big advantage is that the blade can be bent to follow a curve so that a chamber can be built with cells ideally matched to the geometry of the experiment. Moreover, a blade is very rugged, it can withstand severe mechanical shocks and it is also resistant to damage by sparks. The drift time has been measured and a spatial resolution of 250μm has been achieved. Left-right ambiguity can be solved by measuring the charge asymmetry on the walls. The coordinate along the blade is read by external pickup strips. (orig.)

The complex interactions of two and three spark-generated bubbles are studied using high speed photography. The corresponding simulations are performed using a 3D Boundary Element Method (BEM) code. The bubbles generated are between 3 to 5 mm in radius, and they are either in-phase or out-of-phase with one another. The possible interaction phenomena between two identically sized bubbles are summarized. Depending on their relative distances and phase differences, they can coalesce, jet towards or away from one another, split into smaller bubbles, or 'catapult' away from one another. The 'catapult' effect can be utilized to generated high speed jet in the absence of a solid boundary or shockwave. Also three bubble interactions are highlighted. Complicated phenomena such as bubble forming an elliptical shape and bubble splitting are observed. The BEM simulations provide insight into the physics of the phenomena by providing details such as detailed bubble shape changes (experimental observations are limited by the temporal and spatial resolution), and jet velocity. It is noted that the well-tested BEM code [1,2] utilized here is computationally very efficient as compared to other full-domain methods since only the bubble surface is meshed.

To evaluate the influence of the implant-supported porcelain bridges made from non-precious metals using spark erosion techniques, and to discuss the feasibility and details of making the implant restoration by spark erosion technique. The study included 12 patients (9 males and 3 females) with 92 units implant-supported non-precious porcelain bridge from Sep. 2011 to Feb. 2013. All the patients received implant treatment in Department of Oral Implantology, Peking University School and Hospital of Stomatology. The total of 52 implants, were from Nobel Biocare implant system, Camlog implant system and Ankylos implant system. The implant analogs were connected in sequence with a copper wire to guarantee conductivity. The implant electrodes represented one electrode and the superstructure the other. During spark-erosion machining, the cast holding the implant electrodes and the prosthetic framework were moved toward one another, causing an electrical erosion of the protruding elements. After the spark-erosion machining, the minimum gap between the framework and abutment was 0.21 mm, which was two units bridge. The maximum was 2.59 mm, which was 11 units bridge with 6 implants. The average gap was 0.68 mm. After the spark-erosion machining, the bridge fitted well with the passive position stability. The method of making implant-supported non-precious porcelain bridge reduces costs on patients. Spark erosion has the potential to provide implant framework with an excellent fit. The patients are satisfied with the clinical results.

This study reviews the current photographic tourism literature to identify what fields within tourism have been studied by researchers, the contexts, the samples used, the sampling methods employed, the photographic methods and supporting methods used, the data analysis techniques applied and the countries studied. A set of 115 relevant academic articles were selected and assessed using content analysis. The findings showed that overall publications in the field of photographic tourism increa...

A system has been developed to allow remote actuation of sensors in a high vacuum target chamber used with a particle accelerator. Typically, sensors of various types are placed into the target chamber at specific radial and angular positions relative to the beam line and target. The chamber is then evacuated and the experiments are performed for those sensor positions. Then, the chamber is opened, the sensors are repositioned to new angles or radii, and the process is repeated, with a separate pump-down cycle for each set of sensor positions. The new sensor positioning system allows scientists to pre-set the radii of up to a dozen sensors, and then remotely actuate their angular positions without breaking the vacuum of the target chamber. This reduces the time required to reposition sensors from 6 hours to 1 minute. The sensors are placed into one of two tracks that are separately actuated using vacuum-grade stepping motors. The positions of the sensors are verified using absolute optical rotary encoders, and the positions are accurate to 0.5 degrees. The positions of the sensors are electronically recorded and time-stamped after every change. User control is through a GUI using LabVIEW.

The module was used as part of the muon identification system on the barrel of the DELPHI detector at LEP, and was in active use from 1989 to 2000. The module consists of 7 individual muons chambers arranged in 2 layers. Chambers in the upper layer are staggered by half a chamber width with respect to the lower layer. Each individual chamber is a drift chamber consisting of an anode wire, 47 microns in diameter, and a wrapped copper delay line. Each chamber provided 3 signal for each muon passing through the chamber, from which a 3D space-point could be reconstructed.

The tracking detector of the KLOE experiment is 4 m diameter, 3.3 m length drift chamber, designed to contain a large fraction of the decays of low-energy K sub L produced at the Frascati DAPHINE phi-factory. The chamber is made by a thin carbon fiber structure and operated with a helium-based gas mixture in order to minimise conversion of low-energy photons and multiple scattering inside the sensitive volume. The tracking information is provided by 58 layers of stereo wires defing 12,582 cells, 2x2 cm sup 2 in size in the 12 innermost layers and 3x3 cm sup 2 in the outer ones. Details of the chamber design, calibration procedure and tracking performances are presented.

The tracking detector of the KLOE experiment is 4 m diameter, 3.3 m length drift chamber, designed to contain a large fraction of the decays of low-energy K L produced at the Frascati DAPHINE phi-factory. The chamber is made by a thin carbon fiber structure and operated with a helium-based gas mixture in order to minimise conversion of low-energy photons and multiple scattering inside the sensitive volume. The tracking information is provided by 58 layers of stereo wires defing 12,582 cells, 2x2 cm 2 in size in the 12 innermost layers and 3x3 cm 2 in the outer ones. Details of the chamber design, calibration procedure and tracking performances are presented

An ionization smoke detector employs a single radiation source in a construction comprising at least two chambers with a center or node electrode. The radioactive source is associated with this central electrode, and its positioning may be adjusted relative to the electrode to alter the proportion of the source that protrudes into each chamber. The source may also be mounted in the plane of the central electrode, and positioned relative to the center of the electrode. The central electrode or source may be made tiltable relative to the body of the detector

About 16 000 Micro Strip Gas Chambers like this one will be used in the CMS tracking detector. They will measure the tracks of charged particles to a hundredth of a millimetre precision in the region near the collision point where the density of particles is very high. Each chamber is filled with a gas mixture of argon and dimethyl ether. Charged particles passing through ionise the gas, knocking out electrons which are collected on the aluminium strips visible under the microscope. Such detectors are being used in radiography. They give higher resolution imaging and reduce the required dose of radiation.

pieces. Mesures are of the largest one. Multi-wire detectors contain layers of positively and negatively charged wires enclosed in a chamber full of gas. A charged particle passing through the chamber knocks negatively charged electrons out of atoms in the gas, leaving behind positive ions. The electrons are pulled towards the positively charged wires. They collide with other atoms on the way, producing an avalanche of electrons and ions. The movement of these electrons and ions induces an electric pulse in the wires which is collected by fast electronics. The size of the pulse is proportional to the energy loss of the original particle.

In this study, the effect of photograph usage in history education to the students' achievement was tried to be identified. In the study which was done with a pre-test post-test control group design, a frame was tried to be established between the experimental group and the analytical usage of the photograph, the control group's courses were done…

Designed as a forum for the creative photographer who can produce work of an outstanding character, this 18th edition of the annual presents over 160 photographs whose themes range from advertising and industrial pictures, through unusual pictorial solutions in fashion photography, to experimental work, novel nude studies, and dramatic landscapes.…

Full Text Available In this paper, a novel Apache Spark-based framework for spatial data processing is proposed, which includes 4 layers: spatial data storage, spatial RDDs, spatial operations, and spatial query language. The spatial data storage layer uses HDFS to store large size of spatial vector/raster data in the distributed cluster. The spatial RDDs are the abstract logical dataset of spatial data types, and can be transferred to the spark cluster to conduct spark transformations and actions. The spatial operations layer is a series of processing on spatial RDDs, such as range query, k nearest neighbour and spatial join. The spatial query language is a user-friendly interface which provide people not familiar with Spark with a comfortable way to operation the spatial operation. Compared with other spatial frameworks based on Spark, it is highlighted that spatial indexes like grid, R-tree are used for data storage and query. Extensive experiments on real system prototype and real datasets show that better performance can be achieved.

This paper describes the upgrade of MFTF-B Neutral Beam Power Supplies for sparking protection. High performance ion sources spark repeatedly so ion source power supplies must be insensitive to sparking. The hot deck houses the series tetrode, arc and filament supplies, and controls. Hot deck shielding has been upgraded and a continuous shield around the arc, filament, gradient grid, and control cables now extends from the hot deck, through the core snubber, to the source. The shield carries accelerating current and connects only to the source. Shielded source cables go through an outer duct which now connects to a ground plane under the hot deck. This hybrid transmission line is a low inductance path for sparks discharging the stray capacitance of the hot deck and isolation transformers, reducing coupling to building steel. Parallel dc current return cables inside the duct lower inductance to reduce inductive turn-off transients. MOVs to ground further limit surges in the remote power supply return. Single point grounding is at the source. No control or rectifier components have been damaged nor are there any known malfunctions due to sparking up to 80 kV output

A method of reducing mechanical vibrations transmitted to the parallel plate electrodes of ionization chamber x-ray detectors, commonly used in computerized x-ray axial tomography systems, is described. The metal plate cathodes and anodes are mounted in the ionizable gas on dielectric sheet insulators consisting of a composite of silicone resin and glass fibres. (UK)

Final prototype for the LEP vacuum chamber, see 8305170 for more details. Here we see the strips of the NEG pump, providing "distributed pumping". The strips are made from a Zr-Ti-Fe alloy. By passing an electrical current, they were heated to 700 deg C.

This is a review of straw chambers used in the HRS, MAC, Mark III, CLEO, AMY, and TPC e + e - experiments. The straws are 6--8 mm in diameter, operate at 1--4 atmospheres and obtain resolutions of 45--100 microns. The designs and constructions are summarized and possible improvements discussed

The CERN Heavy liquid bubble chamber being installed in the north experimental hall at the PS. On the left, the 1180 litre body; in the centre the magnet, which can produce a field of 26 800 gauss; on the right the expansion mechanism.

This is a cut-out of a LEP vacuum chamber for dipole magnets showing the beam channel and the pumping channel with the getter (NEG) strip and its insulating supports. A water pipe connected to the cooling channel can also be seen at the back.The lead radiation shield lining is also shown. See also 8305563X.

Would the person who borrowed the large bubble chamber lens from the Microcosm workshops on the ISR please return it. This is a much used piece from our object archives. If anybody has any information about the whereabouts of this object, please contact Emma.Sanders@cern.ch Thank you

These were taken at the 2 m hydrogen bubble chamber. The photo shows an early Shiva system where the pre-measurements needed to qualify the event were done manually (cf photo 7408136X). The scanning tables were located in bld. 12. Gilberte Saulmier sits on foreground, Inge Arents at centre.

travel with the proper electronics. Other features of tihe gage assembly are: 1. Micrometer controlled down chamber positioning of the master template to...pressure sensitive "stiff stick" for infinitely varying the rate of travel from zero to maximum. A manual vernier control is incorporated to permit fine

A review of High Energy Physics detectors based on drift chambers is presented. The ionization, drift diffusion, multiplication and detection principles are described. Most common drift media are analysied, and a classification of the detectors according to its geometry is done. Finally the standard read-out methods are displayed and the limits of the spatial resolution are discussed. (Author)

We present here a review of High Energy Physics detectors based on drift chambers. The ionization, drift diffusion, multiplication and detection principles are described. Most common drift media are analysed, and a classification of the detectors according to its geometry is done. Finally the standard read-out methods are displayed and the limits of the spatial resolution are discussed. (Author) 115 refs

The design and construction of the large drift chamber of the KLOE experiment is presented. The track reconstruction is described, together with the calibration method and the monitoring systems. The stability of operation and the performance are studied with samples of e + e - , K S K L and K + K - events

The key feature of liquid wall chambers is the use of a renewable liquid layer to protect chamber structures from target emissions. Two primary options have been proposed and studied: wetted wall chambers and thick liquid wall (TLW) chambers. With wetted wall designs, a thin layer of liquid shields the structural first wall from short ranged target emissions (x-rays, ions and debris) but not neutrons. Various schemes have been proposed to establish and renew the liquid layer between shots including flow-guiding porous fabrics (e.g., Osiris, HIBALL), porous rigid structures (Prometheus) and thin film flows (KOYO). The thin liquid layer can be the tritium breeding material (e.g., flibe, PbLi, or Li) or another liquid metal such as Pb. TLWs use liquid jets injected by stationary or oscillating nozzles to form a neutronically thick layer (typically with an effective thickness of {approx}50 cm) of liquid between the target and first structural wall. In addition to absorbing short ranged emissions, the thick liquid layer degrades the neutron flux and energy reaching the first wall, typically by {approx}10 x x, so that steel walls can survive for the life of the plant ({approx}30-60 yrs). The thick liquid serves as the primary coolant and tritium breeding material (most recent designs use flibe, but the earliest concepts used Li). In essence, the TLW places the fusion blanket inside the first wall instead of behind the first wall.

This booklet contains program and the abstracts of the papers presented at the conference, most of them dealing with performance testing of various types of wire chambers. The publication of proceedings is planned as a special issue of 'Nuclear instruments and methods' later on. All abstracts are in English. An author index for the book of abstracts is given. (A.N.)

Spark counter has been designed and realized and the optimum applied voltage was found to be 600 V. Excellent consistent agreements was observed between counted number of tracks by spark counter and reading by optical microscope. Radon concentration in some houses in Sana'a and Hodeidah cities in Yemen had been performed using LR-115 SSNTD and spark counter system. The average radon concentration in both cities was far lower the alert value. The results showed that radon concentration in the metropolitan area Sana'a was higher than that in Hodeidah city. Also, it was observed that old residential houses had higher levels of radon concentrations have compared to newly built houses in the metropolitan area Sana'a

The fabrication of a miniature spark counter for public communication and education using naturally occurring radon as a radioactive source without involving any man-made radioactivity is described. The battery-powered miniature spark counter weighs 2.07 kg with a volume of 4.844 x 10/sup -4/ m/sup 3/. The circuitry consists of seven major components: timer, high-voltage power supply, attenuator, noninverting amplifier, low-pass filter, one-shot generator, and counter. Cellulose nitrate films irradiated with alpha particles from radon emanating from soil were etched and counted. The visible sparks during counting are rather heuristic, which can be used to demonstrate naturally occurring radioactivity in classrooms or showplaces

Full Text Available Bismuth ferrite, BiFeO3 (BFO, powder was synthesized by hydrothermal method from Bi(NO33·5 H2O and Fe(NO33·9 H2O as precursors. The synthesized powder was further sintered using spark plasma sintering (SPS. The sintering conditions were optimized in order to achieve high density, minimal amount of secondary phases and improved ferroelectric and magnetic properties. The optimal structure and properties were achieved after spark plasma sintering at 630 °C for 20 min, under uniaxial pressure of 90 MPa. The composition, microstructure, ferroelectric and magnetic properties of the SPS samples were characterized and compared to those of conventionally sintered ceramics obtained from the same powder. Although the samples sintered using conventional method showed slightly lower amount of secondary phases, the spark plasma sintered samples exhibited favourable microstructure and better ferroelectric properties.

Tag clouds have proliferated over the web over the last decade. They provide a visual summary of a collection of texts by visually depicting the tag frequency by font size. In use, tag clouds can evolve as the associated data source changes over time. Interesting discussions around tag clouds often include a series of tag clouds and consider how they evolve over time. However, since tag clouds do not explicitly represent trends or support comparisons, the cognitive demands placed on the person for perceiving trends in multiple tag clouds are high. In this paper, we introduce SparkClouds, which integrate sparklines into a tag cloud to convey trends between multiple tag clouds. We present results from a controlled study that compares SparkClouds with two traditional trend visualizations—multiple line graphs and stacked bar charts—as well as Parallel Tag Clouds. Results show that SparkClouds ability to show trends compares favourably to the alternative visualizations.

Spark source mass spectra (SSMS) indicates that ions are extracted from an expanding and decaying plasma. The intensity distribution shows no dependance on vaporization properties of individual elements which indicates explosive vapour formation. This seems further to be a requirement for bridging a vacuum gap. A model including plasma ejection from a superheated anode spot by a process similar to that of an exploding metal wire is proposed. The appearance of hot plasma points in low inductance vacuum sparks can then be explained as exploding micro particles ejected from a final central anode spot. The phenomenological model is compared with available experimental results from literature, but no extensive quantification is attempted

Trace analysis in solids by spark source mass spectrometry involves complicated phenomena: element ionization in spark and blacking of sensitive emulsion by focused ion beam. However the principal risk of selectivity lies in analyser system, which realizes double focusing only for a part of the ions. Therefore, each analyst has to known ionic optics of his apparatus, for ensuring the transmission of mean energetic ions, which are representative of sample composition. By a careful photometry of mass spectrum, good reproducibility can be obtained. Thereafter accuracy depends on the knowledge of sensitivity coefficients proper to this apparatus. (author) [fr

Full Text Available Analysis of crop breeding technology is one of the important means of computer-assisted breeding techniques which have huge data, high dimensions, and a lot of unstructured data. We propose a crop breeding data analysis platform on Spark. The platform consists of Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS and cluster based on memory iterative components. With this cluster, we achieve crop breeding large data analysis tasks in parallel through API provided by Spark. By experiments and tests of Indica and Japonica rice traits, plant breeding analysis platform can significantly improve the breeding of big data analysis speed, reducing the workload of concurrent programming.

The current in a spark channel following voltage breakdown between the high voltage terminal and pressure vessel wall of a large single-ended Van de Graaff machine has been measured. The current waveform is oscillatory and has an envelope which is damped with time. The observed damping coefficient is compared with that obtained using a theoretical expression for the variation of the spark channel resistance with time. Reasonable agreement has been achieved. It is also shown that the initial stored energy on the terminal is rapidly absorbed by the insulating gas during discharge.

Full Text Available Let Mm× n(F be the vector space of all m× n matrices over a field F. In the case where m ≥ n, char (F ≠ 2 and F has at least five elements, we give a complete characterization of linear maps Φ : Mm× n(F → Mm× n(F such that spark(Φ (A = spark(A for any A ∈ Mm× n(F.

Described is a plane spark counter with a localized discharge, which provides better time and X-Y resolution over a large area and at a high counting speed. Unlike conventional counters, in case of puncture, voltage applied to the counter plates is taken off in a limited area round the discharge. Main characteristics of the counter with 0.1 mm gap between electrodes are given. It is shown that time resolution of spark counters with a localized discharge is better than that for other types of counters

In this paper, we describe new developments in gas mixtures which have occurred during the last 3--4 years. In particular, we discuss new results on the measurement and modeling of electron drift parameters, the modeling of drift chamber resolution, measurements of primary ionization and the choice of gas for applications such as tracking, single electron detection, X-ray detection and visual imaging. In addition, new results are presented on photon feedback, breakdown and wire aging

After those of 1978 and 1980, a third Wire Chamber Conference was held from 15-18 February in the Technical University of Vienna. Eight invited speakers covered the field from sophisticated applications in biology and medicine, via software, to the state of the art of gaseous detectors. In some forty other talks the speakers tackled in more detail the topics of gaseous detectors, calorimetry and associated electronics and software

Fourteen cases of double chambered right ventricle were diagnosed angiographically and of these nine cases were confirmed after operation and autopsy at Seoul National University Hospital in recent four years since 1979. The clinical and radiological findings with the emphasis on the cinecardiographic findings were analysed. The summaries of the analysis are as follows: 1. Among 14 cases, 6 cases were male and 8 cases were female. Age distribution was from 4 years to 36 years. 2. In chest x-ray findings, pulmonary vascularity was increased in 8 cases, decreased in 4 cases, and normal in 2 cases. Cardiomegaly was observed in 8 cases and other showed normal heart size. 3. In cinecardiography, 11 cases had interventricular septal defect. Among these 11 cases, VSD located in proximal high pressure chamber was in 2 cases and located in distal low pressure chamber was in 9 cases. 4. The location of aberrant muscle bundle in sinus portion of right ventricle was in 8 cases. In the rest 6 cases, the aberrant muscle bundle was located below the infundibulum of right ventricle. 5. For accurate diagnosis and differential diagnosis with other congenital cardiac anomalies such as Tetralogy of Fallot or isolated pulmonic stenosis, biplane cineangiography and catheterization is an essential procedure.

Fourteen cases of double chambered right ventricle were diagnosed angiographically and of these nine cases were confirmed after operation and autopsy at Seoul National University Hospital in recent four years since 1979. The clinical and radiological findings with the emphasis on the cinecardiographic findings were analysed. The summaries of the analysis are as follows: 1. Among 14 cases, 6 cases were male and 8 cases were female. Age distribution was from 4 years to 36 years. 2. In chest x-ray findings, pulmonary vascularity was increased in 8 cases, decreased in 4 cases, and normal in 2 cases. Cardiomegaly was observed in 8 cases and other showed normal heart size. 3. In cinecardiography, 11 cases had interventricular septal defect. Among these 11 cases, VSD located in proximal high pressure chamber was in 2 cases and located in distal low pressure chamber was in 9 cases. 4. The location of aberrant muscle bundle in sinus portion of right ventricle was in 8 cases. In the rest 6 cases, the aberrant muscle bundle was located below the infundibulum of right ventricle. 5. For accurate diagnosis and differential diagnosis with other congenital cardiac anomalies such as Tetralogy of Fallot or isolated pulmonic stenosis, biplane cineangiography and catheterization is an essential procedure

A target chamber for application in the laser fusion program must satisfy some very basic requirements. (1) Provide a vacuum on the order of 10 -6 torr. (2) Support a microscopically small target in a fixed point in space and verify its location within 5 micrometers. (3) Contain an adjustable beam focusing system capable of delivering a number of laser beams onto the target simultaneously, both in time and space. (4) Provide access for diagnostics to evaluate the results of target irradiation. (5) Have flexibility to allow changes in targets, focusing optics and number of beams. The ARGUS laser which is now under construction at LLL will have a target chamber which meets these requirements in a simple economic manner. The chamber and auxiliary equipment are described, with reference to two double beam focusing systems; namely, lenses and ellipsoidal mirrors. Provision is made for future operation with four beams, using ellipsoidal mirrors for two-sided illumination and lens systems for tetragonal and tetrahedral irradiation

The subtitle of this year's Vienna Wire Chamber Conference - 'Recent Trends and Alternative Techniques' - signalled that it covered a wide range of science and technology. While an opening Vienna talk by wire chamber pioneer Georges Charpak many years ago began 'Les funerailles des chambres a fils (the burial of wire chambers)', the contrary feeling this year was that wire chambers are very much alive!

A study was conducted in order to evaluate the external thermal and vibrational effects on the operation of a laser ignition system for internal combustion (IC) engine applications. West Virginia University (WVU) in conjunction with the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) have constructed a prototype laser spark plug which has been designed to mount directly onto the head of a natural gas engine for the purpose of igniting an air/fuel (A/F) mixture in the engine's combustion chamber. To be considered as a viable replacement for the conventional electrode-based ignition system, integrity, durability and reliability must be justified. Thermal and oscillatory perturbations induced upon the ignition system are major influences that affect laser spark plug (LSP) operation and, therefore, quantifying these effects is necessary to further the advancement and development of this technology. The passively q-switched Nd:YAG laser was mounted on Bruel & Kjaer (B&K) Vibration Exciter Type 4808 Shaker in conjunction with at B&K Power Amplifier Type 2719, which was oscillated in 10 Hz intervals from 0 to 60 Hz using a sine wave to mimic natural gas engine operation. The input signal simulated the rotational velocity of the engine operating from 0 to 3600 RPM with the laser mounted in three different axial orientations. The laser assembly was wrapped with medium-temperature heat tape, outfitted with thermocouples and heated from room temperature to 140 ºF to simulate the temperatures that the LSP may experience when installed on an engine. The acceleration of the payload was varied between 50% and 100% of the oscillator's maximum allowable acceleration in each mounting orientation resulting in a total of 294 total setpoints. For each setpoint, pulse width, pulse width variation, q-switch delay, jitter and output energy were measured and recorded. Each of these dependent variables plays a critical role in multi photon ionization and precise control is necessary to limit

Some patients with Sparks arterial bypass graft show just during the operation a thrombosis in the prothesis. After the rubber rod has been pulled off, thrombogenic substances can be washed out of the prothesis-lumen. They shorten the clotting time of the patients' venous blood. 1000 ml 0.0% NaCl prevent this early thrombosis in the arterial bypass graft.

KNOCK CHARACTERISTICS ANALYSIS OF SUPERCHARGED SPARK IGNITION ENGINE USING THREE GRADES OF FUELS,. D. C. Uguru-Okorie .... pressure with the engine crank angle. The data acquisition system was controlled by a LabView script written which acquired pressure data at a sampling rate of 200 kHz.

These five units comprise a course intended to prepare and train students to conduct alcohol fuel utilization seminars in spark ignition and diesel engines. Introductory materials include objectives and a list of instructor requirements. The first four units cover these topics: ethanol as an alternative fuel (technical and economic advantages,…

Full Text Available Many new biomedical research articles are published every day, accumulating rich information, such as genetic variants, genes, diseases, and treatments. Rapid yet accurate text mining on large-scale scientific literature can discover novel knowledge to better understand human diseases and to improve the quality of disease diagnosis, prevention, and treatment.In this study, we designed and developed an efficient text mining framework called SparkText on a Big Data infrastructure, which is composed of Apache Spark data streaming and machine learning methods, combined with a Cassandra NoSQL database. To demonstrate its performance for classifying cancer types, we extracted information (e.g., breast, prostate, and lung cancers from tens of thousands of articles downloaded from PubMed, and then employed Naïve Bayes, Support Vector Machine (SVM, and Logistic Regression to build prediction models to mine the articles. The accuracy of predicting a cancer type by SVM using the 29,437 full-text articles was 93.81%. While competing text-mining tools took more than 11 hours, SparkText mined the dataset in approximately 6 minutes.This study demonstrates the potential for mining large-scale scientific articles on a Big Data infrastructure, with real-time update from new articles published daily. SparkText can be extended to other areas of biomedical research.

Many new biomedical research articles are published every day, accumulating rich information, such as genetic variants, genes, diseases, and treatments. Rapid yet accurate text mining on large-scale scientific literature can discover novel knowledge to better understand human diseases and to improve the quality of disease diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. In this study, we designed and developed an efficient text mining framework called SparkText on a Big Data infrastructure, which is composed of Apache Spark data streaming and machine learning methods, combined with a Cassandra NoSQL database. To demonstrate its performance for classifying cancer types, we extracted information (e.g., breast, prostate, and lung cancers) from tens of thousands of articles downloaded from PubMed, and then employed Naïve Bayes, Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Logistic Regression to build prediction models to mine the articles. The accuracy of predicting a cancer type by SVM using the 29,437 full-text articles was 93.81%. While competing text-mining tools took more than 11 hours, SparkText mined the dataset in approximately 6 minutes. This study demonstrates the potential for mining large-scale scientific articles on a Big Data infrastructure, with real-time update from new articles published daily. SparkText can be extended to other areas of biomedical research.

The underwater spark discharge between manganese granules was studied. Optical emission spectroscopy methods were used for diagnostics of such discharge plasma. The colloidal solution with manganese nanoparticles was produced by this discharge. The biological applications of this colloid were analyzed. The mechanism of metallic nanoparticle action and their transformation at interacting with biological objects were studied in Alternaria alternata culture

The nitrogen compound concentration in water is increased by atmospheric-pressure plasma discharge treatment. A rod-to-water electrode discharge treatment system using plasma discharge has been developed by our group to obtain water with a high concentration of nitrogen compounds, and this plasma-treated water improves the growth of chrysanthemum roots. However, it is difficult to apply the system to the agriculture because the amount of treated water obtained by using the system too small. In this study, a multi-spark discharge system (MSDS) equipped multiple spark plugs is presented to obtain a large amount of plasma-treated water. The MSDS consisted of inexpensive parts in order to reduce the system introduction cost for agriculture. To suppress the temperature increase of the spark plugs, the 9 spark plugs were divided into 3 groups, which were discharged in order. The plasma-treated water with a NO3- concentration of 50 mg/L was prepared using the MSDS for 90 min, and the treatment efficiency was about 6 times higher than that of our previous system. It was confirmed that the NO2-, O3, and H2O2 concentrations in the water were also increased by treating the water using the MSDS.

Full Text Available Purpose. The purpose of work is an estimation of influence of an electric spark treatment on the state of mouldable superficial coverage of carbon steel. Methodology. The steel of fragment of railway wheel rim served as material for research with chemical composition 0.65% С, 0.67% Mn, 0.3% Si, 0.027% P, 0.028% S. Structural researches were conducted with the use of light microscopy and methods of quantitative metallography. The structural state of the probed steel corresponded to the state after hot plastic deformation. The analysis of hardness distribution in the micro volumes of cathode metal was carried out with the use of microhardness tester of type of PMT-3. An electric spark treatment of carbon steel surface was executed with the use of equipment type of EFI-25M. Findings. After electric spark treatment of specimen surface from carbon steel the forming of multi-layered coverage was observed. The analysis of microstructure found out the existence of high-quality distinctions in the internal structure of coverage metal, depending on the probed area. The results obtained in the process are confirmed by the well-known theses, that forming of superficial coverage according to technology of electric spark is determined by the terms of transfer and crystallization of metal. The gradient of structures on the coverage thickness largely depends on development of structural transformation processes similar to the thermal character influence. Originality. As a result of electric spark treatment on the condition of identical metal of anode and cathode, the first formed layer of coverage corresponds to the monophase state according to external signs. In the volume of coverage metal, the appearance of carbide phase particles is accompanied by the decrease of microhardness values. Practical value. Forming of multi-layered superficial coverage during electric spark treatment is accompanied by the origin of structure gradient on a thickness. The effect

The vessel of the Big European Bubble Chamber, BEBC, was installed at the beginning of the 1970s. The large stainless-steel vessel, measuring 3.7 metres in diameter and 4 metres in height, was filled with 35 cubic metres of liquid (hydrogen, deuterium or a neon-hydrogen mixture), whose sensitivity was regulated by means of a huge piston weighing 2 tonnes. During each expansion, the trajectories of the charged particles were marked by a trail of bubbles, where liquid reached boiling point as they passed through it. The first images were recorded in 1973 when BEBC, equipped with the largest superconducting magnet in service at the time, first received beam from the PS. In 1977, the bubble chamber was exposed to neutrino and hadron beams at higher energies of up to 450 GeV after the SPS came into operation. By the end of its active life in 1984, BEBC had delivered a total of 6.3 million photographs to 22 experiments devoted to neutrino or hadron physics. Around 600 scientists from some fifty laboratories through...

This article explores the entangled histories of three imaging techniques in early nineteenth-century British physical science, techniques in which a dynamic event (such as a sound vibration or an electric spark) was made to leave behind a fixed trace on a sensitive surface. Three categories of "sensitive surface" are examined in turn: first, a metal plate covered in fine dust; second, the retina of the human eye; and finally, a surface covered with a light-sensitive chemical emulsion (a photographic plate). For physicists Michael Faraday and Charles Wheatstone, and photographic pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot, transient phenomena could be studied through careful observation and manipulation of the patterns wrought on these different surfaces, and through an understanding of how the imaging process unfolded through time. This exposes the often-ignored materiality and temporality of epistemic practices around nineteenth-century scientific images said to be "drawn by nature."

The picture shows sections of the LEP vacuum chambers to be installed in the dipole magnets (left) and in the quadrupoles (right). The dipole chamber has three channels: the beam chamber, the pumping duct where the NEG (non-evaporabe getter) is installed and the water channel for cooling (on top in the picture). The pumping duct is connected to the beam chamber through holes in the separating wall. The thick lead lining to shield radiation can also be seen. These chambers were manufactured as extruded aluminium alloy profiles.

Durability of spark plugs is mainly determined by spark gap widening, caused by electrode wear. Knowledge about the erosion mechanisms of spark plug materials is of fundamental interest for the development of materials with a high resistance against electrode erosion. It is therefore crucial to identify those parameters which significantly influence the erosion behaviour of a material. In this work, a reliable and reproducible testing method is presented which produces and characterizes electrode wear under well-defined conditions and which is capable of altering parameters specifically. Endurance tests were carried out to study the dependence of the wear behaviour of pure nickel and platinum on the electrode temperature, gas, electrode gap, electrode diameter, atmospheric pressure, and partial pressure of oxygen. It was shown that erosion under nitrogen is negligible, irrespective of the material. This disproves all common mechanism discussed in the literature explaining material loss of spark plug electrodes. Based on this observation and the variation of the mentioned parameters a new erosion model was deduced. This relies on an oxidation of the electrode material and describes the erosion of nickel and platinum separately. For nickel, electrode wear is caused by the removal of an oxide layer by the spark. In the case of platinum, material loss occurs due to the plasma-assisted formation and subsequent evaporation of volatile oxides in the cathode spot. On the basis of this mechanism a new composite material was developed whose erosion resistance is superior to pure platinum. Oxidation resistant metal oxide particles were added to a platinum matrix, thus leading to a higher erosion resistance of the composite. However, this can be decreased by a side reaction, the separation of oxygen from the metal oxides, which effectively assists the oxidation of the matrix. This reaction can be suppressed by using highly stable oxides, characterized by a large negative Gibbs

A projection graphic display for aiding the analysis of bubble chamberphotographs has been developed by the Instrumentation Group of EF Division at CERN. The display image is generated on a very high brightness cathode ray tube and projected on to the table of the scanning-measuring machines as a superposition to the image of the bubble chamber. The display can send messages to the operator and aid the measurement by indicating directly on the chamber image the tracks which are measured correctly or not. (orig.)

Scientific results of experiments and tests of instruments performed with the Space Plasma Simulation Chamber and its facility are reviewed in the following six categories. 1. Tests of instruments on board rockets, satellites and balloons. 2. Plasma wave experiments. 3. Measurements of plasma particles. 4. Optical measurements. 5. Plasma production. 6. Space plasms simulations. This facility has been managed under Laboratory Space Plasma Comittee since 1969 and used by scientists in cooperative programs with universities and institutes all over country. A list of publications is attached. (author)

To complete the revamp of CERN’s Council Chamber, a new exhibition is being installed just in time for the June Council meetings. Panels will showcase highlights of CERN’s history, using some of the content prepared for the exhibitions marking 50 years of the PS, which were displayed in the main building last November. The previous photo exhibition in the Council Chamber stopped at the 1970s. To avoid the new panels becoming quickly out of date, photos are grouped together around specific infrastructures, rather than following a classic time-line. “We have put the focus on the accelerators – the world-class facilities that CERN has been offering researchers over the years, from the well-known large colliders to the lesser-known smaller facilities,” says Emma Sanders, who worked on the content. The new exhibition will be featured in a future issue of the Bulletin with photos and an interview with Fabienne Marcastel, designer of the exhibit...

A time projection chamber (TPC) was developed at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory to compensate the shortcoming of drift chambers. The characteristics of the TPC are the improvement of the distortion of the trace of particles in long drift, the improvement of particle identification by taking out the analog signal proportional to the number of electrons, and the improvement of the method to analyze the three-dimensional analog signal. Two large TPC's are designed and manufactured in Japan. The details of these TPC's are explained in this paper. The results of test experiment are as follows. The accuracy of the measurement of particle position was about 100 micrometer in the r-theta plane and about 340 micrometer in the Z-direction. The accuracy of the measurement of ionization loss (dE/dx) was less than 4.0 percent. The reconstruction of quark pair production can be made. At present, the identification of K-mesons in jet phenomena is possible, and the cross-sections of inclusive processes are easily obtained. (Kato, T.)

When the Council Chamber was renovated, the old photographs displayed on the walls were taken down... they've now been replaced by new panels printed on Plexiglas. The theme of the exhibition is still the history of CERN, but it now features the very latest from graphic design. Fabienne Marcastel, who designed it, tells us more. Two of the new panels recently installed in the Council Chamber. The presentation is simple and elegant. The content is based essentially on the accelerators and the aim of the graphic design is not to attract the public's attention to the panels but rather to provide a pleasant décor for the Chamber's users. "The old photographs stopped at the LEP. The new panels show the history of CERN but also what the Laboratory is like today. Visually, the plan is the starting point, the key to understanding how CERN has changed. It shows how CERN occupies the land it is built on," explains Fabienne Marcastel, the exhibition's graphic designer. The four panels a...

Extensive application of downsizing, as well as the application of alternative combustion control with respect to well established stoichiometric operation, have determined a continuous increase in the energy that is delivered to the working fluid in order to achieve stable and repeatable ignition. Apart from the complexity of fluid-arc interactions, the extreme thermodynamic conditions of this initial combustion stage make its characterization difficult, both through experimental and numerical techniques. Within this context, the present investigation looks at the analysis of spark discharge and flame kernel formation, through the application of UV-visible spectroscopy. Characterization of the energy transfer from the spark plug’s electrodes to the air-fuel mixture was achieved by the evaluation of vibrational and rotational temperatures during ignition, for stoichiometric and lean fuelling of a direct injection spark ignition engine. Optical accessibility was ensured from below the combustion chamber through an elongated piston design, that allowed the central region of the cylinder to be investigated. Fuel effects were evaluated for gasoline and n-butanol; roughly the same load was investigated in throttled and wide-open throttle conditions for both fuels. A brief thermodynamic analysis confirmed that significant gains in efficiency can be obtained with lean fuelling, mainly due to the reduction of pumping losses. Minimal effect of fuel type was observed, while mixture strength was found to have a stronger influence on calculated temperature values, especially during the initial stage of ignition. In-cylinder pressure was found to directly determine emission intensity during ignition, but the vibrational and rotational temperatures featured reduced dependence on this parameter. As expected, at the end of kernel formation, temperature values converged towards those typically found for adiabatic flames. The results show that indeed only a relatively small part

This paper describes the ATLAS MDT precision muon chamber construction at the University of Michigan. The chamber assembly facilities, the jigging set up, alignment procedures, and other measurements necessary for chamber assembly are described. The chamber quality assurance monitoring procedures and data for the first year mass production are presented. The chamber gas system assembly facilities, and the chamber leak test procedure together with data also reported. The chamber production database, which monitors chamber production, is also discussed.

)mobilities of things, practice approaches to photography and multi sited ethnography, this talk discusses and empirically track the life (the conception, birth, transformative years, ageing and death) travel, detours, makeovers and destinations of (analogue and digital) photographs in our present network societies. So......The Life of Digital Photographs: The Case of Tourist Photography PhD, Jonas Larsen, Lecturer in Social and Cultural Geography, ENSPAC, Roskilde University, Denmark Inspired by ideas that things have lives, the mobilities paradigm's (Hannam et al. 2006) attentiveness to the spatiotemporal (im...... this talk ‘tracks' photographs spatialities and temporalities, their physical and digital materialities and (im)mobilities and ‘placing' within and beyond ‘networked households'. This is done in a historical perspective, seeing the new in the light of the old, so both breaks and coexistences between older...

The Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown (Lunar CATALYST) program is establishing multiple no-funds-exchanged Space Act Agreement (SAA) partnerships with U.S. private sector entities. The purpose of this program is to encourage the development of robotic lunar landers that can be integrated with U.S. commercial launch capabilities to deliver payloads to the lunar surface. As part of the efforts in Lander Technologies, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) is developing liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquid methane (LCH4) engine technology to share with the Lunar CATALYST partners. Liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellants are attractive owing to their relatively high specific impulse for chemical propulsion systems, modest storage requirements, and adaptability to NASA's Journey to Mars plans. Methane has also been viewed as a possible propellant choice for lunar missions, owing to the performance benefits and as a technology development stepping stone to Martian missions. However, in the development of methane propulsion, methane ignition has historically been viewed as a high risk area in the development of such an engine. A great deal of work has been conducted in the past decade devoted to risk reduction in LOX/CH4 ignition. This paper will review and summarize the history and results of LOX/CH4 ignition programs conducted at NASA. More recently, a NASA-developed Augmented Spark Impinging (ASI) igniter body, which utilizes a conventional spark exciter system, is being tested with LOX/CH4 to help support internal and commercial engine development programs, such as those in Lunar CATALYST. One challenge with spark exciter systems, especially at altitude conditions, is the ignition lead that transmits the high voltage pulse from the exciter to the spark igniter (spark plug). The ignition lead can be prone to corona discharge, reducing the energy delivered by the spark and potentially causing non-ignition events. For the current work, a

Adobe Photoshop for Photographers 2014 Release by Photoshop hall-of-famer and acclaimed digital imaging professional Martin Evening has been fully updated to include detailed instruction for all of the updates to Photoshop CC 2014 on Adobe's Creative Cloud, including significant new features, such as Focus Area selections, enhanced Content-Aware filling, and new Spin and Path blur gallery effects. This guide covers all the tools and techniques photographers and professional image editors need to know when using Photoshop, from workflow guidance to core skills to advanced techniques for profess

Magma chambers are a necessary concept in understanding the chemical and physical evolution of magma. The concept may well be similar to a transfer function in circuit or time series analysis. It does what needs to be done to transform source magma into eruptible magma. In gravity and geodetic interpretations the causative body is (usually of necessity) geometrically simple and of limited vertical extent; it is clearly difficult to `see' through the uppermost manifestation of the concentrated magma. The presence of plutons in the upper crust has reinforced the view that magma chambers are large pots of magma, but as in the physical representation of a transfer function, actual magma chambers are clearly distinct from virtual magma chambers. Two key features to understanding magmatic systems are that they are vertically integrated over large distances (e.g., 30-100 km), and that all local magmatic processes are controlled by solidification fronts. Heat transfer considerations show that any viable volcanic system must be supported by a vertically extensive plumbing system. Field and geophysical studies point to a common theme of an interconnected stack of sill-like structures extending to great depth. This is a magmatic Mush Column. The large-scale (10s of km) structure resembles the vertical structure inferred at large volcanic centers like Hawaii (e.g., Ryan et al.), and the fine scale (10s to 100s of m) structure is exemplified by ophiolites and deeply eroded sill complexes like the Ferrar dolerites of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. The local length scales of the sill reservoirs and interconnecting conduits produce a rich spectrum of crystallization environments with distinct solidification time scales. Extensive horizontal and vertical mushy walls provide conditions conducive to specific processes of differentiation from solidification front instability to sidewall porous flow and wall rock slumping. The size, strength, and time series of eruptive behavior

A pictorial drift chamber, called DIOGENE, has been installed at Saturne in order to study central collisions of high energy heavy ions. It has been adapted from the JADE internal detector, with two major differences to be taken into account. First, the center-of-mass of these collisions is not identical to the laboratory reference frame. Second, the energy loss and the momentum ranges of the particles to be detected are different from the ones in JADE. It was also tried to keep the cost as small as possible, hence the choice of minimum size and minimum number of sensitive wires. Moreover the wire planes are shifted from the beam axis: this trick helps very much to quickly reject the bad tracks caused by the ambiguity of measuring drift distances (positive or negative) through times (always positive)

The spark erosion characteristic of high-purity graphite and CO for 1-kHz gas blown rail-gap applications has been experimentally evaluated. The test configuration simulates a single channel, 1650-A arc discharge per linear inch of electrode length, with a 44-kV self-breakdown voltage and a transverse gas flow of 98 m/s. The dielectric gas was seeded with a small quantity of azulene vapor and a downstream uv preionization spark was used to assist the self-breakdown of the test electrodes. The erosion characteristics of other, more conventional electrode materials and dielectric gases were also examined and the results are presented graphically. Commerically pure tungsten in air was determined to exhibit the least erosion rate (2.1 x 10 -6 cc/C) for this duty, as compared to graphite and CO

Fundamental studies on laser ignition have been performed by the US Department of Energy under ARES (Advanced Reciprocating Engines Systems) and by the California Energy Commission under ARICE (Advanced Reciprocating Internal Combustion Engine). These and other works have reported considerable increases in fuel efficiencies along with substantial reductions in green-house gas emissions when employing laser spark ignition. Practical commercial applications of this technology require low cost high peak power lasers. The lasers must be small, rugged and able to provide stable laser beam output operation under adverse mechanical and environmental conditions. New DPSS (Diode Pumped Solid State) lasers appear to meet these requirements. In this work we provide an evaluation of HESP (High Efficiency Side Pumped) DPSS laser design and performance with regard to its application as a practical laser spark plug for use in internal combustion engines.

100 kV three-electrode spark gap filled with 40% SF 6 +60% N 2 mixture under the pressure of ∼ 1 MPa, which has spread Δt ≤ ± 5 ns of operating time delay in the range of 10 4 triggerings and commutation energy of 2.5 kJ, providing electric strength is 100%, is described; at 10 kJ Δt is less than ± 10 ns for 10 3 triggerings. Parallel connection of 16 groups, each consisting of 5 spark gaps with series connection, electric strength being 100%, in the pulse charging unit of Arkadiev-Marx generator being in operation for several years manifested their high efficiency; mutual group spread is ≤ ± 15 ns

Spark counters trace their history back over three decades but have been used in only a limited number of experiments. The key properties of these devices include their capability of precision timing (at the sub 100 ps level) and of measuring the position of the charged particle to high accuracy. At SLAC we have undertaken a program to develop these devices for use in high energy physics experiments involving large detectors. A spark counter of size 1.2 m x 0.1 m has been constructed and has been operating continuously in our test setup for several months. In this talk I will discuss some details of its construction and its properties as a particle detector. 14 references

Particles produced by nuclear decay, cosmic radiation and reactions can be identified through various methods. One of these methods that has been effective in the last century is the cloud chamber. The chamber makes visible cosmic particles that we are exposed to radiation per second. Diffusion cloud chamber is a kind of cloud chamber that is cooled by dry ice. This traditional model has some application difficulties. In this work, Peltier-based cloud chamber cooled by thermoelectric modules is studied. The new model provided uniformly cooled base of the chamber, moreover, it has longer lifetime than the traditional chamber in terms of observation time. This gain has reduced the costs which spent each time for cosmic particle observation. The chamber is an easy-to-use system according to traditional diffusion cloud chamber. The new model is portable, easier to make, and can be used in the nuclear physics experiments. In addition, it would be very useful to observe Muons which are the direct evidence for Lorentz contraction and time expansion predicted by Einsteins special relativity principle.

Parallel plate recombination ionization chambers are known as the detectors which can be used for determination of gamma and high-LET dose components and for characterization of radiation quality of mixed radiation fields. Specially designed chambers can operate correctly even at dose rates of therapeutic beams. In this work the investigations were extended to a set of cylindrical chambers including a TE chamber and three graphite chambers filled with different gases - CO 2 , N 2 and 10 BF 3 , in order to determine the thermal neutrons, 14 N capture, gamma, and fast neutron dose components. The separation of the dose components is based on differences of the shape of the saturation curve, in dependence on LET spectrum of the investigated radiation. The measurements using all the chambers and a parallel plate recombination chamber were performed in a reactor beam of NRI Rez (Czech Republic). The gamma component was determined with accuracy of about 5%, while the variations of its value could be monitored with accuracy of about 0.5%. Relative changes of the beam components could be detected with accuracy of about 5% using the parallel plate chamber. The use of the chambers filled with different gases considerably improved the resolution of the method. (author)

This paper presents a comparative test concerning the operation of a spark-ignition engine, make: Dacia 1300, model: 810.99, fuelled alternatively with gasoline and LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas). The tests carried out show, on the one hand, the maintenance of power and torque performances in both engine fuelling cases, for all the engine operation regimes, and, on the other hand, a considerable decrease in CO and HC emissions when using poor mixtures related to LPG fuelling.

Full Text Available Cogeneration plants are strongly sustained by EU energy policies, one of the best beneficiary of this technology being residential buildings. This paper focus on spark ignition engine as a cogeneration application in order to supply energy for domestic consumers. Are considered two aspects of this solution: the energetic aspect and the environmental one. The energetic aspect deals with the energetic ratios, while the environmental aspect refers to the nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide emissions.

The aerodynamic community has studied active flow control actuators for some time, and developments have led to a wide variety of devices with various features and operating mechanisms. The design requirements for a practical actuator used for active flow control include reliable operation, requisite frequency and amplitude modulation capabilities, and a reasonable lifespan while maintaining minimal cost and design complexity. An active flow control device called the SparkJet actuator has been developed for high-speed flight control and incorporates no mechanical/moving parts, zero net mass flux capabilities and the ability to tune the operating frequency and momentum throughput. This actuator utilizes electrical power to deliver high-momentum flow with a very fast response time. The SparkJet actuator was characterized on the benchtop using a laser-based microschlieren visualization technique and maximum blast wave and jet front velocities of ~400 and ~310 m/s were, respectively, measured in the flowfield. An increase in jet front velocity from 240 to 310 m/s during subatmospheric (60 kPa) testing reveals that the actuator may have greater control authority at lower ambient pressures, which correspond to high-altitude flight conditions for air vehicles. A SparkJet array was integrated into a flat plate and tested in a Mach 1.5 crossflow. Phase-conditioned shadowgraph results revealed a maximum flow deflection angle of 5° created by the SparkJet 275 µs after the actuator was triggered in single-shot mode. Burst mode operation of frequencies up to 700 Hz revealed similar results during wind tunnel testing. Following these tests, the actuator trigger mechanism was improved and the ability of the actuator to be discharged in burst mode at a frequency of 1 kHz was achieved.

The fluctuation theory for the avalanche growth with and without space charge effects is briefly summarized and compared to a broad field of applications. These include spark counters as well as timing and trigger RPCs operated in avalanche mode. A large domain in electrical field strength, pressure, gap size and gas mixture type is covered. A reasonable agreement with the experiment is observed, giving confidence on the validity of both assumptions and treatment of the theory

Results are presented on the design and testing of a pressurized gas blown spark gap switch capable of high repetition rates in a burst mode of operation. The switch parameters which have been achieved are as follows: 220-kV, 42-kA, a five pulse burst at 1-kHz, 12-ns risetime, 2-ns jitter at a pulse width of 50-ns

Experimental Particle Physics has been at the forefront of analyzing the world's largest datasets for decades. The HEP community was among the first to develop suitable software and computing tools for this task. In recent times, new toolkits and systems for distributed data processing, collectively called "Big Data" technologies have emerged from industry and open source projects to support the analysis of Petabyte and Exabyte datasets in industry. While the principles of data analysis in HEP have not changed (filtering and transforming experiment-specific data formats), these new technologies use different approaches and tools, promising a fresh look at analysis of very large datasets that could potentially reduce the time-to-physics with increased interactivity. Moreover these new tools are typically actively developed by large communities, often profiting of industry resources, and under open source licensing. These factors result in a boost for adoption and maturity of the tools and for the communities supporting them, at the same time helping in reducing the cost of ownership for the end-users. In this talk, we are presenting studies of using Apache Spark for end user data analysis. We are studying the HEP analysis workflow separated into two thrusts: the reduction of centrally produced experiment datasets and the end-analysis up to the publication plot. Studying the first thrust, CMS is working together with CERN openlab and Intel on the CMS Big Data Reduction Facility. The goal is to reduce 1 PB of official CMS data to 1 TB of ntuple output for analysis. We are presenting the progress of this 2-year project with first results of scaling up Spark-based HEP analysis. Studying the second thrust, we are presenting studies on using Apache Spark for a CMS Dark Matter physics search, comparing Spark's feasibility, usability and performance to the ROOT-based analysis.

In this study, spark plasma sintered boron carbide (B4C) was examined against neutrons. The specimens were irradiated by reactor neutrons (include both thermal and fast neutrons) up to fluence of 1.37x1021n m-2. Thermal and fast neutrons cause swelling by different interactions with boron (10B) atoms in the related materials. X-Ray diffraction (XRD) patterns and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images were investigated for initial and irradiated samples. In addition, lattice parameters and ...

In the study of Toyota, In-line, 4 cylinders, spark ignition engine using gaskets of varying thicknesses. (1.75mm, 3.5mm, 5.25mm, 7mm and 8.75mm) between the cylinder head and the engine block, the performance characteristics of the engine was investigated via the effect of engine speed on brake power, brake thermal ...

Full Text Available A dense inner layer is highly valued among the surface coatings created through plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO treatment, because the PEO coating has been troubled by inherent porosity since its conception. To produce the favored structure, a proven technique is to prompt a soft sparking transition, which involves a sudden decrease in light and acoustic emissions, and a drop in anodic voltage under controlled current mode. Typically these phenomena occur in an electrolyte of sodium silicate and potassium hydroxide, when an Al-based sample is oxidized with an AC or DC (alternating or direct current pulse current preset with the cathodic current exceeding the anodic counterpart. The dense inner layer feature is pronounced if a sufficient amount of oxide has been amassed on the surface before the transition begins. Tremendous efforts have been devoted to understand soft sparking at the metal–oxide–electrolyte interface. Studies on aluminum alloys reveal that the dense inner layer requires plasma softening to avoid discharge damages while maintaining a sufficient growth rate, a porous top layer to retain heat for sintering the amassed oxide, and proper timing to initiate the transition and end the surface processing after transition. Despite our understanding, efforts to replicate this structural feature in Mg- and Ti-based alloys have not been very successful. The soft sparking phenomena can be reproduced, but the acquired structures are inferior to those on aluminum alloys. An analogous quality of the dense inner layer is only achieved on Mg- and Ti-based alloys with aluminate anion in the electrolytic solution and a suitable cathodic current. These facts point out that the current soft sparking knowledge on Mg- and Ti-based alloys is insufficient. The superior inner layer on the two alloys still relies on rectification and densification of aluminum oxide.

Big data analysis is a hot topic in the IT field now. Spark is a high-reliability and high-performance distributed parallel computing framework for big data sets. K-means algorithm is one of the classical partition methods in clustering algorithm. In this paper, we study the k-means clustering algorithm on Spark. Firstly, the principle of the algorithm is analyzed, and then the clustering analysis is carried out on the supermarket customers through the experiment to find out the different shopping patterns. At the same time, this paper proposes the parallelization of k-means algorithm and the distributed computing framework of Spark, and gives the concrete design scheme and implementation scheme. This paper uses the two-year sales data of a supermarket to validate the proposed clustering algorithm and achieve the goal of subdividing customers, and then analyze the clustering results to help enterprises to take different marketing strategies for different customer groups to improve sales performance.

This paper reports on a technique the authors have developed to produce and analyze, at very low cost, good quality strobe-like photographs. While the concept is similar to the one described by Graney and DiNoto, the strategy described here benefits from recent advances in the fields of digital photography and related software to significantly…

This compilation of reprinted articles that originally appeared in the Journal of Geography from September 1969 through the May 1970 issues, is intended to help teachers use globes, maps, and photographs with skill and understanding. The articles were designed with several objectives in mind: 1) to provide information regarding the design,…

The sagiu..al otoliths of rlShes have in recent years become importanttuonomic aids. Forthis purpose high quality photographs have become essential to illustrate such fine: structures as the crislae and the colliculi which art often useful in distinguishing between closely related species. The method described bdow proved ...

The technique of using toy cameras for both black-and-white and color photography in the art class is described. The author suggests that expensive equipment can limit the growth of a beginning photographer by emphasizing technique and equipment instead of in-depth experience with composition fundamentals and ideas. (KC)

The First SPARK-STREAM Workshop on Livelihoods and Languages took place in Bangkok, Thailand, from 9-11 April 2003. It was the first activity in a SPARK-STREAM learning and communications process around livelihoods and languages. (PDF contains 53 pages)

The system for automatic data handling uses commercially available or state-of-the-art components. The system is flexible enough to accept information from various types of experiments involving photographic data acquisition

Prior research in social psychology indicates that East Asians from collectivistic and interdependent sociocultural systems are more sensitive to contextual information than Westerners, whereas Westerners with individualistic and independent representation have a tendency to process focal and discrete attributes of the environment. Here we have demonstrated that such systematic cultural variations can also be observed in cyberspace, focusing on self-presentation of photographs on Facebook, the most popular worldwide online social network site. We examined cultural differences in face/frame ratios for Facebook profile photographs in two studies. For Study 1, 200 digital profile face photographs of active Facebook users were randomly selected from native and immigrant Taiwanese and Americans. For Study 2, 312 Facebook profiles of undergraduate students of six public universities in East Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan) and the United States (California and Texas) were randomly selected. Overall, the two studies clearly showed that East Asian Facebook users are more likely to deemphasize their faces compared to Americans. Specifically, East Asians living in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan exhibited a predilection for context inclusiveness in their profile photographs, whereas Americans tended to prioritize their focal face at the expense of the background. Moreover, East Asian Facebook users had lower intensity of facial expression than Americans on their photographs. These results demonstrate marked cultural differences in context-inclusive styles versus object-focused styles between East Asian and American Facebook users. Our findings extend previous findings from the real world to cyberspace, and provide a novel approach to investigate cognition and behaviors across cultures by using Facebook as a data collection platform. PMID:22468606

This paper studies the surface properties of the Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) insulator samples used in high power spark gaps. Experiments on surface morphology, surface profile, surface chemical composition and surface leakage current were performed. Metal particles ejected in tangent direction of discharge spots were researched on the sample surface. Three kinds of distinct bands were found on the surface after 1500 shots: colorless and transparent sinking band, black band, and grey powdered coating band. The thickness of the coating band was tens of microns and the maximum radial erosion rate was about 10 μm/C. Surface content analysis indicated that the powdered coating was a mixture of decomposed insulator material and electrode material oxides. In addition, leakage current significantly depended on water content in the chamber and presented an U-shape curve distribution along the insulator surface, in keeping with the amount of powdered coating due to shock waves. Possible reasons of the surface property changes were discussed. Electroconductive oxides of low valence states of Cu and W produced by the reactions between electrode materials and arc plasmas were considered to be the cause of dielectric performance degradation.

Full Text Available In this study, a numerical model has been developed in AVL FIRE software to perform investigation of Direct Natural Gas Injection into the cylinder of Spark Ignition Internal Combustion Engines. In this regard two main parts have been taken into consideration, aiming to convert an MPFI gasoline engine to direct injection NG engine. In the first part of study multi-dimensional numerical simulation of transient injection process, mixing and flow field have been performed via three different validation cases in order to assure the numerical model validity of results. Adaption of such a modeling was found to be a challenging task because of required computational effort and numerical instabilities. In all cases present results were found to have excellent agreement with experimental and numerical results from literature. In the second part, using the moving mesh capability the validated model has been applied to methane Injection into the cylinder of a Direct Injection engine. Five different piston head shapes along with two injector types have been taken into consideration in investigations. A centrally mounted injector location has been adapted to all cases. The effects of injection parameters, combustion chamber geometry, injector type and engine RPM have been studied on mixing of air-fuel inside cylinder. Based on the results, suitable geometrical configuration for a NG DI Engine has been discussed.

The processes in the combustion chamber of internal combustion engines have received increased attention in recent years because their efficiencies are important both economically and environmentally. This doctoral thesis studies the ignition phenomena by means of numerical simulation methods. The fundamental physical relations include flow field conservation equations, thermodynamics, chemical reaction kinetics, transport properties and spark modelling. Special attention is given to the inclusion of chemical kinetics in the flow field equations. Using his No Transport of Radicals Concept method, the author reduces the computational efforts by neglecting the transport of selected intermediate species. The method is validated by comparison with flame propagation data. A computational method is described and used to simulate spark ignition in laminar premixed methane-air mixtures and the autoignition process of a methane bubble surrounded by hot air. The spark ignition simulation agrees well with experimental results from the literature. The autoignition simulation identifies the importance of diffusive and chemical processes acting together. The ignition delay times exceed the experimental values found in the literature for premixed ignition delay, presumably because of the mixing process and lack of information on low temperature reactions in the skeletal kinetic mechanism. Transient turbulent methane jet autoignition is simulated by means of the KIVA-II code. Turbulent combustion is modelled by the Eddy Dissipation Concept. 90 refs., 81 figs., 3 tabs.

Detailing the photographic equipment and astronomical instruments needed to capture celestial images, this guide shows how astrophotography can be accessible to all photographers. Included is a detailed introduction to basic astronomy with information on mapping the sky, locating celestial bodies, and planning an expedition to photograph astronomical phenomena. Photographers learn how to determine the color sensitivity of various films and achieve the best possible exposure, how to ensure a captivating composition, and how commercially processed prints can support their artistic vision. Whethe

Dwyer et al. [2005] recently observed X-ray bursts (in the 30 to 150 keV range) from high-voltage laboratory sparks (positive and negative; 5 cm - 2 m) in air. In this paper, we present results of an independent experiment conducted at a different high-voltage facility and using different instrumentation to confirm (or refute) the production of X-rays by laboratory discharges. The experiment was conducted at the high-voltage laboratory of Uppsala University, Sweden. A spark was created in air at atmospheric pressure applying a standard lightning impulse voltage (1.2/50 impulse; front time: 1.2 μs, time to half-value: 50 μs) to an 80-cm long rod-to-hemisphere air gap. In this experiment the generator was charged to 1 MV with negative polarity. The voltage across the gap at breakdown, the current in the spark, the visible optical radiation from the spark, and the emission of X-rays produced by the spark were measured. The emission of X-rays was detected by a barium fluoride (BaF2) crystal scintillator which had a shape of frustum of a right cone (front diameter: 2.2 cm, rear diameter: 4 cm, and length: 4 cm). The scintillator was attached to a 51 mm PMT (Photonis XP2020/URQ, rise time 1.4 ns, spectral sensitivity 200-550 nm). The ungrounded, light-tight, and electromagnetically sealed metal cabinet having the complete X-ray detector, optical measuring system, oscilloscope and power supplies, was placed about 1 m away from the spark gap so that the center of the crystal was a few centimetres below the high voltage rod electrode. A total of 83 negative voltage impulses were applied across the gap and in 49 cases (59% of the events) the X-ray signals were detected. In 23 cases, the X-ray signal appeared before the collapse of the applied voltage across the gap and about 1 μs prior to onset of the main discharge current. In 26 cases, the X-ray signal appeared at around the main discharge current peak. A rough estimation of total deposited energy in the crystal was

On June 11, 1999 the Department of Energy dedicated the single largest piece of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, California. The ten (10) meter diameter aluminum target high vacuum chamber will serve as the working end of the largest laser in the world. The output of 192 laser beams will converge at the precise center of the chamber. The laser beams will enter the chamber in two by two arrays to illuminate 10 millimeter long gold cylinders called hohlraums enclosing 2 millimeter capsule containing deuterium, tritium and isotopes of hydrogen. The two isotopes will fuse, thereby creating temperatures and pressures resembling those found only inside stars and in detonated nuclear weapons, but on a minute scale. The NIF Project will serve as an essential facility to insure safety and reliability of our nation's nuclear arsenal as well as demonstrating inertial fusion's contribution to creating electrical power. The paper will discuss the requirements that had to be addressed during the design, fabrication and testing of the target chamber. A team from Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) and LLNL with input from industry performed the configuration and basic design of the target chamber. The method of fabrication and construction of the aluminum target chamber was devised by Pitt-Des Moines, Inc. (PDM). PDM also participated in the design of the chamber in areas such as the Target Chamber Realignment and Adjustment System, which would allow realignment of the sphere laser beams in the event of earth settlement or movement from a seismic event. During the fabrication of the target chamber the sphericity tolerances had to be addressed for the individual plates. Procedures were developed for forming, edge preparation and welding of individual plates. Construction plans were developed to allow the field construction of the target chamber to occur parallel to other NIF construction activities. This was

This paper on providing "oo-information" (= objective object-information) on cultural monuments and sites, based on 3D photographs is also a contribution of CIPA task group 3 to the 2013 CIPA Symposium in Strasbourg. To stimulate the interest in 3D photography for scientists as well as for amateurs, 3D-Masterpieces are presented. Exemplary it is shown, due to their high documentary value ("near reality"), 3D photography support, e.g. the recording, the visualization, the interpretation, the preservation and the restoration of architectural and archaeological objects. This also includes samples for excavation documentation, 3D coordinate calculation, 3D photographs applied for virtual museum purposes and as educational tools. In addition 3D photography is used for virtual museum purposes, as well as an educational tool and for spatial structure enhancement, which in particular holds for inscriptions and in rock arts. This paper is also an invitation to participate in a systematic survey on existing international archives of 3D photographs. In this respect it is also reported on first results, to define an optimum digitization rate for analog stereo views. It is more than overdue, in addition to the access to international archives for 3D photography, the available 3D photography data should appear in a global GIS(cloud)-system, like on, e.g., google earth. This contribution also deals with exposing new 3D photographs to document monuments of importance for Cultural Heritage, including the use of 3D and single lense cameras from a 10m telescope staff, to be used for extremely low earth based airborne 3D photography, as well as for "underwater staff photography". In addition it is reported on the use of captive balloon and drone platforms for 3D photography in Cultural Heritage. It is liked to emphasize, the still underestimated 3D effect on real objects even allows, e.g., the spatial perception of extremely small scratches as well as of nuances in color differences

The CLEO group at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring has constructed and commissioned a new central drift chamber. With 9796 cells arranged in 47 layers ranging in radius from 13.2 to 79 cm, the new drift chamber has a smaller outer radius and fewer wires than the drift chamber it replaces, but allows the CLEO tracking system to have improved momentum resolution. Reduced scattering material in the chamber gas and in the inner skin separating the drift chamber from the silicon vertex detector provides a reduction of the multiple scattering component of the momentum resolution and an extension of the usable measurement length into the silicon. Momentum resolution is further improved through quality control in wire positioning and symmetry of the electric fields in the drift cells which have provided a reduction in the spatial resolution to 88 mu m (averaged over the full drift range).

... interior of Library buildings and may set the conditions under which the photographing may take place. Such... 702.4 Parks, Forests, and Public Property LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONDUCT ON LIBRARY PREMISES § 702.4 Photographs. (a) The policy set out herein applies to all individuals who are photographing Library of...

In three experiments, we investigated whether the emotional valence of a photograph influenced the amount of time required to initially identify the contents of the image. In Experiment 1, participants saw a slideshow consisting of positive, neutral, and negative photographs that were balanced for arousal. During the slideshow, presentation time was substantially limited (60 ms), and the images were followed by masks. Immediately following the slideshows, participants were given a recognition memory test. Memory performance was best for positive images and worst for negative images (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, two simultaneous photographs were briefly presented and masked. On a trial-by-trial basis, participants indicated whether the two images were identical or not, thus removing the need for memory storage and retrieval. Again, performance was worst for negative images. The results of Experiment 3 suggested that these valence-based differences were not related attentional effects (Experiment 3). We argue that the valence of an image is detected rapidly and, in the case of negative images, interferes with processing the identity of the scene.

Methodologies used in spectrochemical analysis have showed breakthroughs in last decades due to the newest digital technologies. The simultaneous determination of multiple elements in a short time has been allowed by the development of solid state multichannel detectors. Since its beginning CNEA has developed several spectroscopic methodologies that have been applied to the area of fuels and specific materials of the nuclear activity. The Analytical Chemistry Department has an atomic emission spectrograph with a source of arc/spark whose focal length is 3.4 meters and a spectral dispersion from 2.5 to 5 A/mm. This equipment was originally equipped with photographic detection. This feature although allowed the simultaneous detection of multiple elements, their response (photographic plate) has been not linear and their data's treatment has been very complex. Two alternatives of digital detection have been examined: CCD2 and CMOS3 according to the progress achieved in the instrumentation that is applied to similar techniques. After exhaustive evaluation an arrangement of 9 linear CCD detectors located in the focal plane originally occupied by 2 x10 inch photographic plates was chosen. The software provided by the manufacturer has been insufficient for cover our analytical necessities due to the requirements of our instrumental application. This led to develop an own program for our applications. Today, our detection system includes an assembly of 7 detectors and an acquisition program with basic control that has been developed in-house. Calibration curves for some chemical elements have shown very promising results, the sensitivity has increased at least 10 times and an important improvement of accuracy of the measurements has also been achieved thanks to our modification. An upgrade with an associated database that will allow obtaining spectra in 3D configuration and extend the instrumental capabilities to second order is being prepared (author)

The High Momentum Spectrometer in Hall C will use planar drift chambers for charged particle track reconstruction. The chambers are constructed using well understood technology and a conventional gas mixture. Two (plus one spare) drift chambers will be constructed for this spectrometers. Each chamber will contain 6 planes of readout channels. This paper describes the chamber design and gas handling system used.

The use of non-toxic propellants in future exploration vehicles would enable safer, more cost effective mission scenarios. One promising "green" alternative to existing hypergols is liquid methane/liquid oxygen. To demonstrate performance and prove feasibility of this propellant combination, a 100lbf LO2/LCH4 engine was developed and tested under the NASA Propulsion and Cryogenic Advanced Development (PCAD) project. Since high ignition energy is a perceived drawback of this propellant combination, a test program was performed to explore ignition performance and reliability versus delivered spark energy. The sensitivity of ignition to spark timing and repetition rate was also examined. Three different exciter units were used with the engine's augmented (torch) igniter. Propellant temperature was also varied within the liquid range. Captured waveforms indicated spark behavior in hot fire conditions was inconsistent compared to the well-behaved dry sparks (in quiescent, room air). The escalating pressure and flow environment increases spark impedance and may at some point compromise an exciter.s ability to deliver a spark. Reduced spark energies of these sparks result in more erratic ignitions and adversely affect ignition probability. The timing of the sparks relative to the pressure/flow conditions also impacted the probability of ignition. Sparks occurring early in the flow could trigger ignition with energies as low as 1-6mJ, though multiple, similarly timed sparks of 55-75mJ were required for reliable ignition. An optimum time interval for spark application and ignition coincided with propellant introduction to the igniter and engine. Shifts of ignition timing were manifested by changes in the characteristics of the resulting ignition.

The use of non-toxic propellants in future exploration vehicles would enable safer, more cost effective mission scenarios. One promising "green" alternative to existing hypergols is liquid methane/liquid oxygen. To demonstrate performance and prove feasibility of this propellant combination, a 100lbf LO2/LCH4 engine was developed and tested under the NASA Propulsion and Cryogenic Advanced Development (PCAD) project. Since high ignition energy is a perceived drawback of this propellant combination, a test program was performed to explore ignition performance and reliability versus delivered spark energy. The sensitivity of ignition to spark timing and repetition rate was also examined. Three different exciter units were used with the engine s augmented (torch) igniter. Propellant temperature was also varied within the liquid range. Captured waveforms indicated spark behavior in hot fire conditions was inconsistent compared to the well-behaved dry sparks (in quiescent, room air). The escalating pressure and flow environment increases spark impedance and may at some point compromise an exciter s ability to deliver a spark. Reduced spark energies of these sparks result in more erratic ignitions and adversely affect ignition probability. The timing of the sparks relative to the pressure/flow conditions also impacted the probability of ignition. Sparks occurring early in the flow could trigger ignition with energies as low as 1-6mJ, though multiple, similarly timed sparks of 55-75mJ were required for reliable ignition. An optimum time interval for spark application and ignition coincided with propellant introduction to the igniter and engine. Shifts of ignition timing were manifested by changes in the characteristics of the resulting ignition.

Photographic plates have enormous advantages over other two-dimensional detectors in that they have largely uniform sensitivity over a large area. Unfortunately they are dogged by lack of dynamic range and complex response functions. This paper describes a successful method of internal calibration (ie. using only information contained in the images on the plate) which for stars gives a dynamic range of fourteen magnitudes and allows correct photometry of those extended objects which are not saturated.

The researchers-engineers of Renault company, the French car maker, have developed a spark-plug capable to generate a spark 3 to 6 times more longer than with a classical plug. The geometry of the different parts of the plug keeps the spark (electron avalanche) along the dielectric ceramic insulator between the central electrode and the socket. With this plug, the ignition of heterogenous mixtures is more efficient and the voltage necessary to generate the spark remains below 20000 V (with respect to 40000 V with a classical plug). Short paper. (J.S.)

To conduct the measurement of neutron flux and the fission rate distribution at several position in assemblies, the micro plate fission chamber was designed and fabricated. Since the requirement of smaller volume and less structure material was taken into consideration, it is convinient, commercial and practical to use fission chamber to measure neutron flux in specific condition. In this paper, the structure of fission chamber and process of fabrication were introduced and performance test result was presented. The detection efficiency is 91.7%. (authors)

Research investigating the application of pressure-cycled bubble chambers to fast neutron detection is described. Experiments with a Halon-filled chamber showed clear sensitivity to an AmBe neutron source and insensitivity to a (137)Cs gamma source. Bubble formation was documented using high-speed photography, and a ceramic piezo-electric transducer element registered the acoustic signature of bubble formation. In a second set of experiments, the bubble nucleation response of a Freon-134a chamber to an AmBe neutron source was documented with high-speed photography.

Research investigating the application of pressure-cycled bubble chambers to fast neutron detection is described. Experiments with a Halon-filled chamber showed clear sensitivity to an AmBe neutron source and insensitivity to a {sup 137}Cs gamma source. Bubble formation was documented using high-speed photography, and a ceramic piezo-electric transducer element registered the acoustic signature of bubble formation. In a second set of experiments, the bubble nucleation response of a Freon-134a chamber to an AmBe neutron source was documented with high-speed photography.

A medium sized stainless steel scattering chamber has been constructed for nuclear scattering and reaction experiments at the 14UD pelletron accelerator facility. It has been so designed that several types of detectors, varying from small sized silicon surface barrier detectors to medium sized gas detectors and NaI detectors can be conveniently positioned inside the chamber for detection of charged particles. The chamber has been planned to perform the following types of experiments : angular distributions of elastically scattered particles, fission fragments and other charged particles, angular correlations for charged particles e.g. protons, alphas and fission fragments. (author). 2 figs

The Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown (Lunar CATALYST) program is establishing multiple no-funds-exchanged Space Act Agreement (SAA) partnerships with U.S. private sector entities. The purpose of this program is to encourage the development of robotic lunar landers that can be integrated with U.S. commercial launch capabilities to deliver payloads to the lunar surface. NASA can share technology and expertise under the SAA for the benefit of the CATALYST partners. MSFC seeking to vacuum test Augmented Spark Impinging (ASI) igniter with methane and new exciter units to support CATALYST partners and NASA programs. ASI has previously been used/tested successfully at sea-level, with both O2/CH4 and O2/H2 propellants. Conventional ignition exciter systems historically experienced corona discharge issues in vacuum. Often utilized purging or atmospheric sealing on high voltage lead to remedy. Compact systems developed since PCAD could eliminate the high-voltage lead and directly couple the exciter to the spark igniter. MSFC developed Augmented Spark Impinging (ASI) igniter. Successfully used in several sea-level test programs. Plasma-assisted design. Portion of ox flow is used to generate hot plasma. Impinging flows downstream of plasma. Additional fuel flow down torch tube sleeve for cooling near stoichiometric torch flame. Testing done at NASA GRC Altitude Combustion Stand (ACS) facility 2000-lbf class facility with altitude simulation up to around 100,000 ft. (0.2 psia [10 Torr]) via nitrogen driven ejectors. Propellant conditioning systems can provide temperature control of LOX/CH4 up to test article.

A spark counter of the type developed by Pestov has been tested with the aim of searching for an optimum time response function, changing voltage, content of noble and quencher gases, pressure and energy-loss. Replacing the usual argon by neon has brought an improvement of the resolution and a significant reduction of tails in the time response function. It has been proven that a counter as long as 90 cm can deliver, using neon gas mixture, a time resolution σ<60 ps with about 1% absolute tail and an efficiency of about 90%

The method of Underwater Spark Discharges(USD) is one of the most effective ways for generating extremely compressed atomic clusters (called itonic clusters or micro Ball Lightning(BL)). It is also associated with energetic X-rays, which are caused by the break up of the itonic electrons. Despite of low voltage discharges of about 50 V, the high energy X-rays up to 150 keV can be generated. This paper proposed two methods of generating X-ray laser by using micro BL: (1) micro BL on surfaces of regularly arrayed wire cathodes and (2) gas of micro BL generated by USD. (author)

Today, smart meters are being used worldwide. As a matter of fact smart meters produce large volumes of data. Thus, it is important for smart meter data management and analytics systems to process petabytes of data. Benchmarking and testing of these systems require scalable data, however, it can...... be challenging to get large data sets due to privacy and/or data protection regulations. This paper presents a scalable smart meter data generator using Spark that can generate realistic data sets. The proposed data generator is based on a supervised machine learning method that can generate data of any size...

Emerging lower cost titanium metal powder produced via an electrolytic method has been fully consolidated using spark plasma sintering (SPS) generating microstructures comparable to those observed in Ti–6Al–4V PM product. This is the first time powder from an alternative titanium extraction method has been processed via SPS and it is benchmarked with commercial alloys (CP–Ti, Ti–6Al–4V, and Ti–5Al–5V–5Mo–3Cr). The effect of powder feedstock size, morphology, and alloy chemistry on the consoli...

A transition from a low to a high spin state in the magnetization saturation between 1000 and 1100 o C calcination temperature is observed in YIG powders prepared by oxides mixture. Spark plasma sintering of these powders between 900 and 950 o C leads to dense samples with minimal formation of YFeO 3 , opening the way to co-sintering of YIG with metals or metallic alloys. The optical properties depend on the sintering stage: low (high) density samples show poor (bulk) optical absorption.

Spark source mass spectrometer MS7 has been designed to determine traces of impurities in solids without standards. An atlas of 12 000 lines, assembled in the Grenoble laboratory, allows a quick investigation of mass spectra, notwithstanding their complexity due to multiply charged and polyatomic darkening. Photometric measurements increase accuracy calibration curve is known for each photo-plate. Further, reproducibility is better, if random fluctuations of matrix line darkening are corrected. So far, in a concentration range of 0,01 to 1 000 ppm (atomic), reproducibility is approximately 20 per cent, but absolute value of results depends on 'sensitivity coefficients'. (authors) [fr

Spark plasma sintering (SPS), also known as field assisted sintering technique (FAST), is a relatively new method for rapid consolidation of metallic or ceramic powders. In the present work, its suitability for the manufacturing of metal supported Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3-δ (BSCF) based membrane by co-sintering of functional ceramic BSCF layer and porous metallic support has been investigated. The BSCF based membranes are highly attractive for oxygen separation from air due to mixed ionic and e...

A transition from a low to a high spin state in the magnetization saturation between 1000 and 1100 {sup o}C calcination temperature is observed in YIG powders prepared by oxides mixture. Spark plasma sintering of these powders between 900 and 950 {sup o}C leads to dense samples with minimal formation of YFeO{sub 3}, opening the way to co-sintering of YIG with metals or metallic alloys. The optical properties depend on the sintering stage: low (high) density samples show poor (bulk) optical absorption.

All the drift tube ("DT") and resistive plate chambers ("RPC") packages foreseen to be installed in the central barrel ring ("YB0") before the magnet test have been installed (some are missing in the photograph but have since been installed). These silver-coloured rectangular boxes in the gaps between the steel of the rings (red in the image) detect muons. Chambers for Sectors 4 and 5 (sector 1 is at the 9 o'clock position and the counting is clockwise) as well as a couple of chambers in the support "feet" (sectors 9 and 11) will be installed after the magnet test. Chambers for sectors 1 and 7 will be installed in the underground cavern ("UXC") - the latter will be in the places used for the lifting and lowering of the ring.

The paper describes the multigap resistive plate chamber (RPC). This is a variant of the wide gap RPC. However it has much improved time resolution, while keeping all the other advantages of the wide gap RPC design.

A light diffusion system for transmitting light to a target area. The light is transmitted in a direction from a proximal end to a distal end by an optical fiber. A diffusing chamber is operatively connected to the optical fiber for transmitting the light from the proximal end to the distal end and transmitting said light to said target area. A plug is operatively connected to the diffusing chamber for increasing the light that is transmitted to the target area.

In-vessel, online neutron flux measurements are routinely performed in mock-up and material testing reactors by fission chambers. Those measurements have a wide range of applications, including characterization of experimental conditions, reactor monitoring and safety. Depending on the application, detectors may experience a wide range of constraints, of several magnitudes, in term of neutron flux, gamma-ray flux, temperature. Hence, designing a specific fission chamber and measuring chain for a given application is a demanding task. It can be achieved by a combination of experimental feedback and simulating tools, the latter being based on a comprehensive understanding of the underlying physics. A computation route that simulates fission chambers, named CHESTER, is presented. The retrieved quantities of interest are the neutron-induced charge spectrum, the electronic and ionic pulses, the mean current and variance, the power spectrum. It relies on the GARFIELD suite, originally developed for drift chambers, and makes use of the MAGBOLTZ code to assess the drift parameters of electrons within the filling gas, and the SRIM code to evaluate the stopping range of fission products. The effect of the gamma flux is also estimated. Computations made with several fission chambers exemplify the possibilities of the route. A good qualitative agreement is obtained when comparing the results with the experimental data available to date. In a near future, a comprehensive experimental programme will be undertaken to qualify the route using the known neutron sources, mock-up reactors and wide choice of fission chambers, with a stress on the predictiveness of the Campbelling mode. Depending on the results, a refinement of the modelling and an effort on the accuracy of input data are also to be considered. CHESTER will then make it possible to predict the overall sensitivity of a chamber, and to optimize the design for a given application. Another benefit will be to increase the

The first goal of this paper is to clarify the reference conditions for the reference dosimetry of clinical proton beams. A clear distinction is made between proton beam delivery systems which should be calibrated with a spread-out Bragg peak field and those that should be calibrated with a (pseudo-)monoenergetic proton beam. For the latter, this paper also compares two independent dosimetry techniques to calibrate the beam monitor chambers: absolute dosimetry (of the number of protons exiting the nozzle) with a Faraday cup and reference dosimetry (i.e. determination of the absorbed dose to water under IAEA TRS-398 reference conditions) with an ionization chamber. To compare the two techniques, Monte Carlo simulations were performed to convert dose-to-water to proton fluence. A good agreement was found between the Faraday cup technique and the reference dosimetry with a plane-parallel ionization chamber. The differences—of the order of 3%—were found to be within the uncertainty of the comparison. For cylindrical ionization chambers, however, the agreement was only possible when positioning the effective point of measurement of the chamber at the reference measurement depth—i.e. not complying with IAEA TRS-398 recommendations. In conclusion, for cylindrical ionization chambers, IAEA TRS-398 reference conditions for monoenergetic proton beams led to a systematic error in the determination of the absorbed dose to water, especially relevant for low-energy proton beams. To overcome this problem, the effective point of measurement of cylindrical ionization chambers should be taken into account when positioning the reference point of the chamber. Within the current IAEA TRS-398 recommendations, it seems advisable to use plane-parallel ionization chambers—rather than cylindrical chambers—for the reference dosimetry of pseudo-monoenergetic proton beams. (paper)

A view of the dismantling of the magnet of BEBC, the 3.7 m European Bubble Chamber : iron magnetic shielding ; lower and upper parts of the vacuum enclosure of the magnet; turbo-molecular vacuum pumps for the "fish-eye" windows; the two superconducting coils; a handling platform; the two cryostats suspended from the bar of the travelling crane which has a 170 ton carrying capacity. The chamber proper, not dismantled, is inside the shielding.

Highlights: • A new slider–crank mechanism, with superior performance is presented. • Thermodynamic processes as well as vibration and internal forces have been modeled. • Comparison with the conventional four-stroke spark ignition engines is made. • Advantages and disadvantages of the proposed mechanism are discussed. - Abstract: In this paper a new symmetrical crank and slider mechanism is proposed and a zero dimensional model is utilized to study its combustion performance enhancement in a four-stroke spark ignition (SI) engine. The main features of this new mechanism are superior thermodynamic efficiency, lower internal frictions, and lower pollutants. Comparison is made between its performance and that of the conventional four-stroke SI engines. Presented mechanism is designed to provide better fuel consumption of internal combustion engines. These advantages over standard engine are achieved through synthesis of new mechanism. Numerical calculation have been performed for several cases of different mechanism parameters, compression ratio and engine speed. A comprehensive comparison between their thermodynamic processes as well as vibration and internal forces has been done. Calculated efficiency and power diagrams are plotted and compared with performance of a conventional SI engine. Advantages and disadvantages of the proposed mechanism are discussed in details

A full High Energy Physics (HEP) data analysis is divided into multiple data reduction phases. Processing within these phases is extremely time consuming, therefore intermediate results are stored in files held in mass storage systems and referenced as part of large datasets. This processing model limits what can be done with interactive data analytics. Growth in size and complexity of experimental datasets, along with emerging big data tools are beginning to cause changes to the traditional ways of doing data analyses. Use of big data tools for HEP analysis looks promising, mainly because extremely large HEP datasets can be represented and held in memory across a system, and accessed interactively by encoding an analysis using highlevel programming abstractions. The mainstream tools, however, are not designed for scientific computing or for exploiting the available HPC platform features. We use an example from the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. The LHC is the highest energy particle collider in the world. Our use case focuses on searching for new types of elementary particles explaining Dark Matter in the universe. We use HDF5 as our input data format, and Spark to implement the use case. We show the benefits and limitations of using Spark with HDF5 on Edison at NERSC.

Electro-spark deposition (ESD) is a pulsed-arc micro-welding process using short-duration, high-current electrical pulses to deposit an electrode material on a metallic substrate. It is one of the few methods available by which a fused, metallurgically bonded coating can be applied with such a low total heat input that the bulk substrate material remains at or near ambient temperatures. The short duration of the electrical pulse allows an extremely rapid solidification of the deposited material and results in an exceptionally fine-grained, homogenous coating that approaches (and with some materials, actually is) an amorphous structure. This structure is believed to contribute to the good tribological and corrosion performance observed for hardsurfacing materials used in the demanding environments of high temperatures, liquid metals, and neutron irradiation. A brief historical review of the process is provided, followed by descriptions of the present state-of-the-art and of the performance and applications of electro-spark deposition coatings in liquid-metal-cooled nuclear reactors

Genomic information is increasingly used in medical practice giving rise to the need for efficient analysis methodology able to cope with thousands of individuals and millions of variants. The widely used Hadoop MapReduce architecture and associated machine learning library, Mahout, provide the means for tackling computationally challenging tasks. However, many genomic analyses do not fit the Map-Reduce paradigm. We therefore utilise the recently developed SPARK engine, along with its associated machine learning library, MLlib, which offers more flexibility in the parallelisation of population-scale bioinformatics tasks. The resulting tool, VARIANTSPARK provides an interface from MLlib to the standard variant format (VCF), offers seamless genome-wide sampling of variants and provides a pipeline for visualising results. To demonstrate the capabilities of VARIANTSPARK, we clustered more than 3,000 individuals with 80 Million variants each to determine the population structure in the dataset. VARIANTSPARK is 80 % faster than the SPARK-based genome clustering approach, ADAM, the comparable implementation using Hadoop/Mahout, as well as ADMIXTURE, a commonly used tool for determining individual ancestries. It is over 90 % faster than traditional implementations using R and Python. The benefits of speed, resource consumption and scalability enables VARIANTSPARK to open up the usage of advanced, efficient machine learning algorithms to genomic data.

Proton beams, from the 1GeV Cosmotron accelerator at Brookhaven, were used in the 1950s to produce strange particles. One big leap forward technologically was the development of the diffusion cloud chamber which made detecting particle tracks more accurate and sensitive. A large co-operative team worked on its development. By the mid 1950s enough tracks had been observed to show the associated production of strange particles. It was the same Brookhaven workers who developed the eighty-inch hydrogen bubble chamber which took the first photograph of the long predicted omega minus particle at the end of the decade. (UK)

The characteristics of using a laser-induced spark as a monopole source in scale model measurements were assessed by comparison with an electric spark and a miniature spherical loudspeaker. Room impulse responses of first order directivity sources were synthesized off-line using six spatially dis...

Full Text Available This work introduces Osman Darcan, an important name in the history of Ankara photography studios. Darcan followed in the footsteps of famous Austrian photographer Othmar Pferschy, whom he met in Istanbul, to go on to create his own valuable work. On leaving the Public Press Authority Photo Film Center, where he worked as a newsreel photographer and film operator, in 1943 he began taking photographs at the Tatbikat Theater at the Ankara State Conservatoire, where he continued as the photographer for the State Theater until the end of his life. At the same time, this master photographer took the pictures of a select coterie of Ankara’s leading individuals and well-known performers at a studio he opened on Anafartalar Caddesi. In both these roles, his photographs evoke admiration thanks to Darcan’s professional abilities and level of artistry.

A directional jet drift chamber with PAD readout is proposed here which can select vertex originated muons within a given time window and eliminate those muons which primarily originate upstream, using only a PAD readout. Drift time provides the Z-coordinate, and the center of gravity of charge distribution provides the r-ψ coordinates. Directionality at the trigger level is obtained by the timing measurement from the PAD hits within a given time window. Because of the long drift time between the bunch crossings, a muon collider enables one to choose a drift distance in the drift chamber as long as 50 cm. This is an important factor in reducing cost of drift chambers which have to cover relatively large areas

A comparison study is made, for the spectrochemical analysis of cobalt-base superalloys, between the liquid-layer solid-sample spark technique and the conventional point-to-plane spark analysis in air...

National Aeronautics and Space Administration — We will construct SciSpark, a scalable system for interactive model evaluation and for the rapid development of climate metrics and analyses. SciSpark directly...

Electrostatic septa (ZS) are used in the extraction of the particle beams from the CERN SPS to the North Area experimental zone. These septa employ high electric fields, generated from a 300 kV power supply, and are particularly prone to internal sparking around the cathode structure. This sparking degrades the electric field quality, consequently affecting the extracted beam, vacuum and equipment performance. To mitigate these effects, a Spark Detection System (SDS) has been realised, which is based on an industrial SIEMENS S7-400 programmable logic controller and deported Boolean processors modules interfaced through a PROFINET fieldbus. The SDS interlock logic uses a moving average spark rate count to determine if the ZS performance is acceptable. Below a certain spark rate it is probable that the ZS septa tank vacuum can recover, thus avoiding transition into a\

The demand for processing ever increasing amounts of genomic data has raised new challenges for the implementation of highly scalable and efficient computational systems. In this paper we propose SparkBLAST, a parallelization of a sequence alignment application (BLAST) that employs cloud computing for the provisioning of computational resources and Apache Spark as the coordination framework. As a proof of concept, some radionuclide-resistant bacterial genomes were selected for similarity analysis. Experiments in Google and Microsoft Azure clouds demonstrated that SparkBLAST outperforms an equivalent system implemented on Hadoop in terms of speedup and execution times. The superior performance of SparkBLAST is mainly due to the in-memory operations available through the Spark framework, consequently reducing the number of local I/O operations required for distributed BLAST processing.

The phenomenology of wire chamber aging is discussed and fundamentals of proportional counters are presented. Free-radical polymerization and plasma polymerization are discussed. The chemistry of wire aging is reviewed. Similarities between wire chamber plasma (>1 atm dc-discharge) and low-pressure rf-discharge plasmas, which have been more widely studied, are suggested. Construction and use of a system to allow study of the plasma reactions occurring in wire chambers is reported. A proportional tube irradiated by an 55 Fe source is used as a model wire chamber. Condensable species in the proportional tube effluent are concentrated in a cryotrap and analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. Several different wire chamber gases (methane, argon/methane, ethane, argon/ethane, propane, argon/isobutane) are tested and their reaction products qualitatively identified. For all gases tested except those containing methane, use of hygroscopic filters to remove trace water and oxygen contaminants from the gas resulted in an increase in the average molecular weight of the products, consistent with results from low-pressure rf-discharge plasmas. It is suggested that because water and oxygen inhibit polymer growth in the gas phase that they may also reduce polymer deposition in proportional tubes and therefore retard wire aging processes. Mechanistic implications of the plasma reactions of hydrocarbons with oxygen are suggested. Unresolved issues in this work and proposals for further study are discussed

The results of a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) exploratory research project investigating the feasibility of fast neutron detection using a suitably prepared and operated, pressure-cycled bubble chamber are described. The research was conducted along two parallel paths. Experiments with a slow pressure-release Halon chamber at the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago showed clear bubble nucleation sensitivity to an AmBe neutron source and insensitivity to the 662 keV gammas from a 137Cs source. Bubble formation was documented via high-speed (1000 frames/sec) photography, and the acoustic signature of bubble formation was detected using a piezo-electric transducer element mounted on the base of the chamber. The chamber’s neutron sensitivity as a function of working fluid temperature was mapped out. The second research path consisted of the design, fabrication, and testing of a fast pressure-release Freon-134a chamber at PNNL. The project concluded with successful demonstrations of the PNNL chamber’s AmBe neutron source sensitivity and 137Cs gamma insensitivity. The source response tests of the PNNL chamber were documented with high-speed photography.

This paper presents research efforts made in three different phases with the objective of improving the fuel economy of and reducing exhaust emissions from conventional, carbureted, two-stroke spark ignition (SI) engines, which are widely employed in two-wheel transportation in India. A review concerning the existing two-stroke engine technology for this application is included. In the first phase, a new scavenging system was developed and tested to reduce the loss of fresh charge through the exhaust port. In the second phase, the following measures were carried out to improve the combustion process: (1) using an in-cylinder catalyst, such as copper, chromium, and nickel, in the form of coating; (2) providing moderate thermal insulation in the combustion chamber, either by depositing thin ceramic material or by metal inserts; (3) developing a high-energy ignition system; and (4) employing high-octane fuel, such as methanol, ethanol, eucalyptus oil, and orange oil, as a blending agent with gasoline. Based on the effectiveness of the above measures, an optimized design was developed in the final phase to achieve improved performance. Test results indicate that with an optimized two-stroke SI engine, the maximum percentage improvement in brake thermal efficiency is about 31%, together with a reduction of 3400 ppm in hydrocarbons (HC) and 3% by volume of carbon monoxide (CO) emissions over the normal engine (at 3 kW, 3000 rpm). Higher cylinder peak pressures (3-5 bar), lower ignition delay (2-4 degrees CA), and shorter combustion duration (4-10 degrees CA) are obtained. The knock-limited power output is also enhanced by 12.7% at a high compression ratio (CR) of 9:1. The proposed modifications in the optimized design are simple, low-cost, and easy to adopt for both production and existing engines.

This paper presents research efforts made in three different phases with the objective of improving the fuel economy of and reducing exhaust emissions from conventional, carbureted, two-stroke spark ignition (SI) engines, which are widely employed in two-wheel transportation in India. A review concerning the existing two-stroke engine technology for this application is included. In the first phase, a new scavenging system was developed and tested to reduce the loss of fresh charge through the exhaust port. In die second phase, the following measures were carried out to improve the combustion process: (1) using an in-cylinder catalyst, such as copper, chromium, and nickel, in the form of coating; (2) providing moderate thermal insulation in the combustion chamber, either by depositing thin ceramic material or by metal inserts; (3) developing a high-energy ignition system; and (4) employing high-octane fuel, such as methanol, ethanol, eucalyptus oil, and orange oil, as a blending agent with gasoline. Based on the effectiveness of the above measures, an optimized design was developed in the final phase to achieve improved performance. Test results indicate that with an optimized two-stroke SI engine, the maximum percentage improvement in brake thermal efficiency is about 31%, together with a reduction of 3400 ppm in hydrocarbons (HC) and 3% by volume of carbon monoxide (CO) emissions over the normal engine (at 3 kW, 3000 rpm). Higher cylinder peak pressures (3-5 bar), lower ignition delay (2-4{degrees}CA){degrees} and shorter combustion duration (4-10 {degrees}CA) are obtained. The knock-limited power output is also enhanced by 12.7% at a high compression ratio (CR) of 9:1. The proposed modifications in the optimized design are simple, low-cost and easy to adopt for both production and existing engines.

Full Text Available A comparative performance analysis is being carried out on a four cylinder, four stroke cycle, spark ignition engine having displacement volume 1297cc. The cylinder head of original gasoline based engine was modified by drilling holes from upper surfaces of head to individual combustion chamber to convert the engine in a CNG direct injection engine. The CNG port injection (CNG-PI system and CNG direct injection (CNG-DI system were incorporated with the single engine. The engine was retrofitted to run on both CNG-PI and CNG-DI system alternately with common CNG tank and other engine loading and measurement system. The engine was equipped with electrical dynamometer having rheostat type loading. The CNG direct injection system was incorporated with various sensors and engine ECU. The operating parameters can be obtained on computer screen by loading the computer with engine through switch box. The engine was run over the speed range of 1000 rpm to 3000 rpm with incremental speed of 300 rpm. The performance parameters were calculated from observations and recorded for both CNG-PI and CNG-DI system. The experimental investigation exhibits that, the average 7-8% reduction in BSFC while the engine was running with CNG-DI system as compared to that of CNG-PI system. Also the engine produced 8-9% higher brake torque and hence higher brake power. The engine gives 6-7% higher brake thermal efficiency with CNG-DI system as compared to CNG-PI system.

Minimization of the cyclic variations is one of the most important design goal for spark-ignited engines. Primary motivation of this study is to reduce the cyclic variations in spark ignition engines by controlling the spark timing for consecutive cycles. A stochastic model was performed between spark timing and in–cylinder maximum pressure by using the system identification techniques. The incylinder maximum pressure of the next cycle was predicted with this model. Minimum variance and generalized minimum variance controllers were designed to regulate the in–cylinder maximum pressure by changing the spark timing for consecutive cycles of the test engine. The produced control algorithms were built in LabView environment and installed to the Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) chassis. According to the test results, the in–cylinder maximum pressure of the next pressure cycle can be predicted fairly well, and the spark timing can be regulated to keep the in–cylinder maximum pressure in a desired band to reduce the cyclic variations. At fixed spark timing experiments, the COV Pmax and COV imep were 3.764 and 0.677%, whereas they decreased to 3.208 and 0.533% when GMV controller was applied, respectively. - Highlights: • Cycle per cycle spark timing control was carried out. • A stochastic process model was described between P max and the spark timing. • The cyclic variations in P max was decreased by keeping it in a desired band. • Different controllers were used to adjust spark timing signal of the next cycle. • COV Pmax was decreased by about 15% by using GMV controller

A transmission line is discussed for application in an underwater spark-discharge technique in the cleaning of a horizontal well by incorporating a power-transmission model into the simulation. The pulsed-spark-discharge technique has been proposed for clogged-well rehabilitation, because it removes incrustations that are attached to well screens by using strong pressure waves that are generated by the rapid expansion of a spark channel. To apply the pulsed-spark-discharge technique to the cleaning of horizontal wells, the coaxial cable between the pulsed power supply and the spark gap as a load needs to be extended to a few hundred meters. Prior to field application, pulsed-spark-discharge experiments were conducted and the role of the transmission line was examined using an improved simulation model. In the model, a non-linear interaction of the spark channel and the capacitor bank is described by the pulse-forming action of the coaxial cable. Based on the accurate physical properties of the water plasma, such as the equation of state and electrical conductivity within the region of interest, the amount of energy contributed to the development of a shock wave was evaluated. The simulation shows that if the initial conditions of the spark channel are the same, no further reduction in strength of the pressure wave occurs, even if the cable length is increased above 50 m. Hence, the degraded peak pressure that was observed in the experiments using the longer cable is attributed to a change in the initial condition of the spark channel. The parametric study suggests that the low initial charging voltage, the high ambient water pressure, and the long cable length yield the low initial spark-channel density, which results in a reduced peak pressure. The simulation of line charging is presented to discuss the principle of disturbing the pre-breakdown process by an extended cable.

Experimental Hall B at Jefferson Laboratory houses the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer, the magnetic field of which is produced by a superconducting toroid. The six coils of this toroid divide the detector azimuthally into six sectors, each of which contains three large multi-layer drift chambers for tracking charged particles produced from a fixed target on the toroidal axis. Within the 18 drift chambers are a total of 35,148 individually instrumented hexagonal drift cells. The novel geometry of these chambers provides for good tracking resolution and efficiency, along with large acceptance. The design and construction challenges posed by these large-scale detectors are described, and detailed results are presented from in-beam measurements.

The picture shows a "Flat-Fish" vacuum chamber being prepared in the ISR workshop for testing prior to installation in the Split Field Magnet (SFM) at intersection I4. The two shells of each part were hydroformed from 0.15 mm thick inconel 718 sheet (with end parts in inconel 600 for easier manual welding to the arms) and welded toghether with two strips which were attached by means of thin stainless steel sheets to the Split Field Magnet poles in order to take the vertical component of the atmospheric pressure force. This was the thinnest vacuum chamber ever made for the ISR. Inconel material was chosen for its high elastic modulus and strenght at chamber bake-out temperature. In this picture the thin sheets transferring the vertical component of the atmosferic pressure force are attached to a support frame for testing. See also 7712182, 7712179.

This chapter reports on an experiment to determine the total charm cross section at different incident momenta using the small, heavy liquid bubble chamber HOBC. Holography in liquid hydrogen is also tested using the holographic lexan bubble chamber HOLEBC with the aim of preparing a future holographic experiment in hydrogen. The high intensity tests show that more than 100 incident tracks per hologram do not cause a dramatic effect on the picture quality. Hydrogen is more favorable than freon as the bubble growth is much slower in hydrogen. An advantage of holography is to have the maximum resolution in the full volume of the bubble chamber, which allows a gain in sensitivity by a factor of 10 compared to classical optics as 100 tracks per hologram look reasonable. Holograms are not more difficult to analyze than classical optics high-resolution pictures. The results show that holography is a very powerful technique which can be used in very high resolution particle physics experiments

In this study, spark plasma sintered boron carbide (B 4 C) was examined against neutrons. The specimens were ir-radiated by reactor neutrons (include both thermal and fast neutrons) up to fluence of 1.37x10 21 n*m -2 . Thermal and fast neutrons cause swelling by different interactions with boron ( 10 B) atoms in the related materials. X-Ray diffraction (XRD) patterns and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images were investigated for initial and irradiated samples. In addition, lattice parameters and unit cell volumes were calculated for the samples. The swelling percentages were calculated to be within a range of 0.49-3.80 % (average 1.70 %) for the outer surface of the materials for applied neutron irradiation doses. (authors)

The Spark Plasma Sintering presents fast processing time when compared to conventional sintering techniques. This allows to control the grain growth during sintering as well as the diffusion rate of a multi-material compounds, and make possible obtainment of functionally graded materials and nanostructured compounds. Powders of high purity silica glass and crystalline silica were sintered in a SPS equipment at temperatures around 1350° C, i.e., above the softening temperature of silica glass and below the melting temperature of quartz crystal. As a result, glass ceramics with pure silica glass matrix reinforced with crystalline alpha-quartz grains were fabricated at almost any desired range of composition, as well as controlled size of the crystalline reinforcement. X-ray diffraction and density measurements showed the possibility to manufacture a well controlled density and crystallinity glass-ceramic materials. (author)

We propose microwave-enhanced spark-induced breakdown spectroscopy with the same measurement and analysis processes as in laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, but with a different plasma generation mechanism. The size and lifetime of the plasma generated can contribute to increased measurement accuracy and expand its applicability to industrial measurement, such as an exhaust gas analyzer for automobile engine development and its regulation, which has been hard to operate by laser at an engineering evaluation site. The use of microwaves in this application helps lower the cost, reduce the system size, and increase the ease of operation to make it commercially viable. A microwave frequency of 2.45 GHz was used to enhance the volume and lifetime of the plasma at atmospheric condition even at elevated pressure.

In electron-beam-controlled discharge CO 2 lasers, such as those used in the Antares and Helios laser-fusion drivers at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL), protection needs to be provided against possible damage due to overvoltage. A passive (self-breakdown) point-plane spark gap has been developed and successfully used in the Helios power amplifiers which operate at voltages up to 300 kV. A gap of similar design is planned for use in the Antares power amplifiers which operate at 550 kV. These gaps must reliably hold off the normal discharge voltage, but break down with short delay if overvoltaged, diverting the discharge energy to a resistor. A prototype of the Antares gap has been built and is undergoing tests. Parameters being investigated include voltage polarity, gap spacing, gas composition, and gas pressure. Results of these measurements and the operational experience of the Helios gaps will be presented

Full Text Available Due to the increasing dimensionality and volume of remotely sensed hyperspectral data, the development of acceleration techniques for massive hyperspectral image analysis approaches is a very important challenge. Cloud computing offers many possibilities of distributed processing of hyperspectral datasets. This paper proposes a novel distributed parallel endmember extraction method based on iterative error analysis that utilizes cloud computing principles to efficiently process massive hyperspectral data. The proposed method takes advantage of technologies including MapReduce programming model, Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS, and Apache Spark to realize distributed parallel implementation for hyperspectral endmember extraction, which significantly accelerates the computation of hyperspectral processing and provides high throughput access to large hyperspectral data. The experimental results, which are obtained by extracting endmembers of hyperspectral datasets on a cloud computing platform built on a cluster, demonstrate the effectiveness and computational efficiency of the proposed method.

Hydrogen is found to be a suitable alternative fuel for spark ignition engines with certain drawbacks, such as high NO x emission and small power output. However, supercharging may solve such problems. In this study, the effects of equivalence ratio, compression ratio and inlet pressure on the performance and NO x emission of a four stroke supercharged hydrogen engine have been analyzed using a specially developed computer program. The results are verified and compared with experimental data obtained from tests on a Ricardo E6/US engine. A chart specifying the safe operation zone of the hydrogen engine has been produced. The safe operation zone means no pre-ignition, acceptable NO x emission, high engine efficiency and lower specific fuel consumption in comparison with the gasoline engine. The study also shows that supercharging is a more effective method to increase the output of a hydrogen engine rather than increasing the compression ratio of the engine at the knock limited equivalence ratio

Full Text Available In this work, we report temperature-dependent thermal properties of alumina powder and bulk alumina consolidated by spark plasma sintering method. The properties were measured between room temperature and 250ºC using a thermal constants analyzer. Alumina powder had very low thermal properties due to the presence of large pores and absence of bonding between its particles. Fully dense alumina with a relative density of 99.6 % was obtained at a sintering temperature of 1400°C and a holding time of 10 min. Thermal properties were found to mainly dependent on density. Thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity, and specific heat of the fully dense alumina were 34.44 W/mK, 7.62 mm2s-1, and 1.22 J/gK, respectively, at room temperature. Thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity decreased while specific heat increased with the increase in temperature from room temperature to 250ºC.

Aiming at the problem of “information overload” in the human resources industry, this paper proposes a human resource recommendation algorithm based on Ensemble Learning. The algorithm considers the characteristics and behaviours of both job seeker and job features in the real business circumstance. Firstly, the algorithm uses two ensemble learning methods-Bagging and Boosting. The outputs from both learning methods are then merged to form user interest model. Based on user interest model, job recommendation can be extracted for users. The algorithm is implemented as a parallelized recommendation system on Spark. A set of experiments have been done and analysed. The proposed algorithm achieves significant improvement in accuracy, recall rate and coverage, compared with recommendation algorithms such as UserCF and ItemCF.

resolution and high sensitivity are necessary. For exact dosimetry which is done using ionization chambers (ICs), the recombination taking place in the IC has to be known. Up to now, recombination is corrected phenomenologically and more practical approaches are currently used. Nevertheless, Jaff´e's theory...... of columnar recombination was designed to model the detector efficiency of an ionization chamber. Here, we have shown that despite the approximations and simplification made, the theory is correct for the LETs typically found in clinical radiotherapy employing particles from protons to carbon ions...

Drift chambers play an important role in particle physics experiments as tracking detectors. We started this laboratory course with a brief review of the theoretical background and then moved on to the the experimental setup which consisted of a single-sided, single-cell drift chamber. We also used a plastic scintillator paddle, standard P-10 gas mixture (90% Ar, 10% CH4) and a collimated 90Sr source. During the laboratory session the students performend measurements of the following quantities: a) drift velocities and their variations as function of the drift field; b) gas gains and c) diffusion of electrons as they drifted in the gas

This study examined how career scientists became interested in science. Eight practicing scientists were asked a focus question, "What sparked your interest in science?" Their responses recorded during personal interviews and reported in correspondence frame this qualitative study. Analysis of the data revealed a variety of influences. The influences were coded, arranged into lists, and grouped by theme. A total of 18 themes emerged from the data. Five of the emerging themes were common across all of the participants. They were the influence of a family member, the influence of a teacher, being naturally curious, being interested in science, and reading books, magazines, and/or encyclopedias. Five themes were common among 5 to 7 participants. These themes included visiting museums, having broad exposure, enjoyment of mathematics, enjoying being outside, and freedom to play and explore. Eight themes were common among 2 to 4 of the participants. They were financial incentive, influence of religion, participation in science fairs, influence of the manned space program, having a scientist in the family, having the opportunity to teach others, not seeing self as a scientist, and first generation college graduate. The emerging themes were compared and contrasted with historical and contemporary literature. Vocational psychology's leading career choice and development literature was also aligned with the emerging themes. Data from this study supports tenets of Trait and Factor Theory, Developmental Theory, and Social Learning Theory. Reported data also supports the proposed movement toward a unified theory of career choice and development. A combination of personality traits, developmental stages, self-efficacy, and learning experiences influenced the vocational decisions of the scientists who participated in this study. The study concludes with suggestions for sparking and sustaining interest in science that people responsible for preparing future scientists may find

We are developing a lightning fast Big Data technology called SciSpark based on ApacheTM Spark under a NASA AIST grant (PI Mattmann). Spark implements the map-reduce paradigm for parallel computing on a cluster, but emphasizes in-memory computation, "spilling" to disk only as needed, and so outperforms the disk-based Apache Hadoop by 100x in memory and by 10x on disk. SciSpark extends Spark to support Earth Science use in three ways: Efficient ingest of N-dimensional geo-located arrays (physical variables) from netCDF3/4, HDF4/5, and/or OPeNDAP URLS; Array operations for dense arrays in scala and Java using the ND4S/ND4J or Breeze libraries; Operations to "split" datasets across a Spark cluster by time or space or both. For example, a decade-long time-series of geo-variables can be split across time to enable parallel "speedups" of analysis by day, month, or season. Similarly, very high-resolution climate grids can be partitioned into spatial tiles for parallel operations across rows, columns, or blocks. In addition, using Spark's gateway into python, PySpark, one can utilize the entire ecosystem of numpy, scipy, etc. Finally, SciSpark Notebooks provide a modern eNotebook technology in which scala, python, or spark-sql codes are entered into cells in the Notebook and executed on the cluster, with results, plots, or graph visualizations displayed in "live widgets". We have exercised SciSpark by implementing three complex Use Cases: discovery and evolution of Mesoscale Convective Complexes (MCCs) in storms, yielding a graph of connected components; PDF Clustering of atmospheric state using parallel K-Means; and statistical "rollups" of geo-variables or model-to-obs. differences (i.e. mean, stddev, skewness, & kurtosis) by day, month, season, year, and multi-year. Geo-variables are ingested and split across the cluster using methods on the sciSparkContext object including netCDFVariables() for spatial decomposition and wholeNetCDFVariables() for time-series. The

Attempts to photograph the surface of the Earth date from the 1800's, when photographers attached cameras to balloons, kites, and even pigeons. Today, aerial photographs and satellite images are commonplace. The rate of acquiring aerial photographs and satellite images has increased rapidly in recent years. Views of the Earth obtained from aircraft or satellites have become valuable tools to Government resource planners and managers, land-use experts, environmentalists, engineers, scientists, and a wide variety of other users. Many people want historical aerial photographs for business or personal reasons. They may want to locate the boundaries of an old farm or a piece of family property. Or they may want a photograph as a record of changes in their neighborhood, or as a gift. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) maintains the Earth Science Information Centers (ESIC?s) to sell aerial photographs, remotely sensed images from satellites, a wide array of digital geographic and cartographic data, as well as the Bureau?s wellknown maps. Declassified photographs from early spy satellites were recently added to the ESIC offerings of historical images. Using the Aerial Photography Summary Record System database, ESIC researchers can help customers find imagery in the collections of other Federal agencies and, in some cases, those of private companies that specialize in esoteric products.

The laser ignition of methane/oxygen mixtures in a sub-scale rocket combustion chamber has been investigated numerically and experimentally. The ignition test case used in the present paper was generated during the In-Space Propulsion project (ISP-1), a project focused on the operation of propulsion systems in space, the handling of long idle periods between operations, and multiple reignitions under space conditions. Regarding the definition of the numerical simulation and the suitable domain for the current model, 2D and 3D simulations have been performed. Analysis shows that the usage of a 2D geometry is not suitable for this type of simulation, as the reduction of the geometry to a 2D domain significantly changes the conditions at the time of ignition and subsequently the flame development. The comparison of the numerical and experimental results shows a strong discrepancy in the pressure evolution and the combustion chamber pressure peak following the laser spark. The detailed analysis of the optical Schlieren and OH data leads to the conclusion that the pressure measurement system was not able to capture the strong pressure increase and the peak value in the combustion chamber during ignition. Although the timing in flame development following the laser spark is not captured appropriately, the 3D simulations reproduce the general ignition phenomena observed in the optical measurement systems, such as pressure evolution and injector flow characteristics.

The hundreds of mirrors around this Ring Imaging Cherenkov Chamber reflect cones of light created by fast moving particles to a detector. The velocity of a particle can be measured by the size of the ring produced on the detector. DELPHI, which ran from 1989 to 2000 on the LEP accelerator, was primarily concerned with particle identification.

This artistically-enhanced image of real particle tracks was produced in the Big European Bubble Chamber (BEBC). Liquid hydrogen is used to create bubbles along the paths of the particles as a piston expands the medium. A magnetic field is produced in the detector causing the particles to travel in spirals, allowing charge and momentum to be measured.

Discusses why students who play musical instruments should participate in a chamber music ensemble. Provides rationale for using small ensembles in the high school band curriculum. Focuses on the topic of scheduling, illustrating how to insert small ensembles into the lesson schedule, and how to set up a new schedule. (CMK)

There is disclosed an arrangement for measuring the effectiveness of a shielding material against electromagnetic fields. The arrangement comprises a first and a second reverberation chamber sharing a common wall. The common wall is partly made of the shielding material. A first antenna is arranged

Calcium hex aluminate (CaAl{sub 1}2O{sub 1}9) is the most alumina-rich intermediate compound of the CaO-Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} system. The formation of this aluminate is produced by the reaction between calcium oxide and alumina with the consequent formation of intermediates compounds with lower alumina content with increasing temperature (CaAl{sub 2}O{sub 4}, CaAl4O{sub 7}). In this study we studied the variation of sintering parameters for obtaining dense and pure calcium hex aluminate by reaction sintering by Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS). A mixing of Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} and CaCO{sub 3} were used as reactive. Final densities close to the theoretical and phase transformation over 93% were achieved by this method. (Author) 22 refs.

The hydrostatic hyperbaric chamber (HHC) represents the merger of several technologies in development for NASA aerospace applications, harnessed to directly benefit global health. NASA has significant experience developing composite hyperbaric chambers for a variety of applications. NASA also has researched the application of water-filled vessels to increase tolerance of acceleration forces. The combination of these two applications has resulted in the hydrostatic chamber, which has been conceived as a safe, affordable means of making hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) available in the developing world for the treatment of a variety of medical conditions. Specifically, HBOT is highly-desired as a possibly curative treatment for Buruli Ulcer, an infectious condition that afflicts children in sub-Saharan Africa. HBOT is simply too expensive and too dangerous to implement in the developing world using standard equipment. The HHC technology changes the paradigm. The HHC differs from standard hyperbaric chambers in that the majority of its volume is filled with water which is pressurized by oxygen being supplied in the portion of the chamber containing the patient s head. This greatly reduces the amount of oxygen required to sustain a hyperbaric atmosphere, thereby making the system more safe and economical to operate. An effort was taken to develop an HHC system to apply HBOT to children that is simple and robust enough to support transport, assembly, maintenance and operation in developing countries. This paper details the concept for an HHC ventilation and pressurization system to provide controlled pressurization and adequate washout of carbon dioxide while the subject is enclosed in the confined space during the administration of the medical treatment. The concept took into consideration operational complexity, safety to the patient and operating personnel, and physiological considerations. The simple schematic, comprised of easily acquired commercial hardware

Full Text Available A new method of electro spark deposition method was put forward, which was based on the theory of electro spark deposition by changing the polarity in the liquid. Tungsten coating layers was produced on surface of Stainless Steel by electro spark deposition. The micro hardness, microstructure, chemical composition and phases of the coating layer were examined by means of hardness test, scanning electron microscopy (SEM and energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS analysis. The results showed that there was tungsten coating in the surface, which was discontinuous. Microhardness of the coating layer was about 3 times more than that of the substrate. The combination between coating layer and substrate was metallurgical bond.

trading in the spot clean spark spread and wind power futures. To facilitate hedging decisions, we propose a time-varying copula mixture for the joint behavior of the spot clean spark spread and the daily wind index. The model describes the data surprisingly well, both in terms of the marginals...... and the dependence structure, while being straightforward and easy to implement. Based on Monte Carlo simulations from the proposed model, the results indicate that significant benefits can be achieved by using wind power futures to hedge the spot clean spark spread. Moreover, a comparison study shows...

Spark-anodization of titanium can produce adherent and wear-resistant TiO2 film on the surface, but the spark-anodized titanium has lots of surface micro-pores, resulting in an unstable and high friction coefficient against many counterparts. In this study, the diamond-like carbon (DLC) was introduced into the micro-pores of spark-anodized titanium by the magnetron sputtering technique and a TiO2/DLC composite coating was fabricated. The microstructure and tribological properties of TiO2/DLC ...

Edinburgh-born Muriel Spark is one of modern Scotland's greatest writers. Examination of her work reveals that the subjects of madness and psychiatry are recurrent themes in her writing. She herself had a mental breakdown when she was a young woman and she took an interest in the world of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. In her short stories, Spark approaches the subject of madness in a variety of ways: she relates it to the supernatural; to writing fiction; and to religion. She frequently juxtaposes secular and supernatural explanations of mental disturbance. Spark adopts a sceptical and, at times, mocking view of psychiatrists and psychiatric treatment. Both psychoanalysis and pills are seen as problematic.

The objective of this research is to study the possibility of using photographic paper, available on the market, for x-ray radiography instead of x-ray film which is more expensive and more complicate to develop. This research concerned about (1) the method and the limitation of x-ray radiography by using 3 types of photographic paper, namely, F2, F3 and F4 distributed by the Kodak Company, as the screen with 3 different kinds of intensifying screens produced by the Phillips Company, Toshiba Company and Picker Company to increase photographic efficiency; (2) correction factor between these 3 types of photographic paper and intensifying screens; (3) the most suitable combination of photographic paper and intensifying screens used; (4) the result of using photographic paper and x-ray film in x-ray radiography regarding quality, cost and film developing. From the research, it was found that (1) the combination of intensifying screen from Picker Company and Kodak photographic paper No. F4 coating with silver bromide with a little mixture of silver iodide resulted in higher sensitivity and more contrast than other combination; (2) photographic papers had more limitation than x-ray film in the sense that it could be used with the iron test piece no thicker than 3 cm.with the x-ray energy of 220 k Vp; (3) photographic papers would give almost the same degree of contrast and sensitivity as x-ray film when used with thin test specimens. For instance the smallest wire No.12 of DIN 62 FE could be seen in the photographic paper at 220 k Vp while it could be seen in the x-ray film at 200 k Vp while it could be seen in the x-ray film at 200 k Vp. The exposure of photographic paper would be in vicinity of x-ray film when it was used with thin test specimens. Photographic paper would produce sharpness definition, density and contrast picture and also details of the picture closely to what given by x-ray film. It is concluded that if the test specimens are thin, photographic papers

A radiation detection ionization chamber is described. It consists of an elongated cylindrical pencil-shaped tubing forming an outer wall of the chamber and a center electrode disposed along the major axis of the tubing. The length of the chamber is substantially greater than the diameter. A cable connecting portion at one end of the chamber is provided for connecting the chamber to a triaxial cable. An end support portion is connected at the other end of the chamber for supporting and tensioning the center electrode. 17 claims

Highlights: • Experiments with simulations are designed to probe into engine severe knock. • Energy convergence at central and edge region is observed in closed-limited space. • Modes with different intensities and mechanism of energy convergence are revealed. • Chamber shape and equivalence ratio can affect the energy convergence. • The destruction effects of energy convergence on pistons are recognized. - Abstract: Energy convergence is considered as an important phenomenon in internal combustion engines under severe knock, in which shock waves caused by violent combustion may aggregate the energy released by fuel burning to damage engine parts like pistons and spark plugs easily. In order to reveal such convergence mechanism and its destruction effects, a novel detonation bomb experiment combined with numerical simulations are conducted. In bomb experiments, a detonation wave is forcibly introduced into a clearance-variable cone-roof combustion chamber by a high energy spark ignition. Four pressure transducers were installed in different positions to monitor the energy convergence. Combined with the experiments, numerical simulations were conducted to reveal the convergence modes and mechanisms. Finally, destruction samples were presented to validate this research. It’s found that the energy convergence of shock waves always occurs in middle and edge region, which are vulnerable to be damaged. Three modes of energy convergence are concluded for middle region while several ways of energy convergence are concluded for edge region, which are all related with the chamber shape and may result in different levels of convergence. It’s also found that though detonation strength (knock intensity) can be changed by both equivalence ratios and initial pressures, only the equivalence ratios can change the convergence modes while the initial pressures cannot.

This image from 1960 is of real particle tracks formed in CERN's first liquid hydrogen bubble chamber to be used in experiments. It was a tiny detector by today's standards at only 32 cm in diameter. Negatively charged pions with an energy of 16 GeV enter from the left. One of them interacts with a proton in the liquid hydrogen and creates sprays of new particles, including a neutral particle (a lambda) that decays to produce the "V" of two charged particle tracks at the centre. Lower-energy charged particles produced in the interactions spiral in the magnetic field of the chamber. The invention of bubble chambers in 1952 revolutionized the field of particle physics, allowing real particle tracks to be seen and photographed, after releasing the pressure that had kept a liquid above its normal boiling point.

The structure of LEP, with long bending magnets and little access to the vacuum chamber between them, required distributed pumping. This is an early prototype for the LEP vacuum chamber, made from extruded aluminium. The main opening is for the beam. The small channel to the right is for cooling water, to carry away the heat deposited by the synchroton radiation from the beam. The 4 slots in the channel to the left house the strip-shaped ion-getter pumps (see 7810255). The ion-getter pumps depended on the magnetic field of the bending magnets, too low at injection energy for the pumps to function well. Also, a different design was required outside the bending magnets. This design was therefore abandoned, in favour of a thermal getter pump (see 8301153 and 8305170).

It has happened quite often in the history of science that theoreticians, confronted with some major difficulty, have successfully gone back thirty years to look at ideas that had then been thrown overboard. But it is rare that experimentalists go back thirty years to look again at equipment which had become out-dated. This is what Charpak and his colleagues did to emerge with the 'multiwire proportional chamber' which has several new features making it a very useful addition to the armoury of particle detectors. In the 1930s, ion-chambers, Geiger- Muller counters and proportional counters, were vital pieces of equipment in nuclear physics research. Other types of detectors have since largely replaced them but now the proportional counter, in new array, is making a comeback.

This report summarizes the design and prototype tests of single wire drift chambers to be used in Fermilab test beam lines. The goal is to build simple, reliable detectors which require a minimum of electronics. Spatial resolution should match the 300 ..mu..m rms resolution of the 1 mm proportional chambers that they will replace. The detectors will be used in beams with particle rates up to 20 KHz. Single track efficiency should be at least 99%. The first application will be in the MT beamline, which has been designed for calibration of CDF detectors. A set of four x-y modules will be used to track and measure the momentum of beam particles.

"Derrick shows that Photoshop can be friendly as well as powerful. In part, he does that by focusing photographers on the essential steps of an efficient workflow. With this guide in hand, you'll quickly learn how to leverage Photoshop CS4's features to organize and improve your pictures."-- John Nack, Principal Product Manager, Adobe Photoshop & BridgeMany photographers -- even the pros -- feel overwhelmed by all the editing options Photoshop provides. The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers pares it down to only the tools you'll need most often, and shows you how to use those tools as

The manner of expansion of an electric spark channel is of interest in the understanding of such phenomena as lightning. The development of a camera suitable for photography of this expansion is described, with some results for hydrogen. (author)

Test data was obtained from spark ignition production and preproduction engines at the engine and vehicle level. The engines were applicable for vehicles 2000 to 3000 pounds in weight. The data obtained provided trade-offs between fuel economy, power...

Test data was obtained from spark ignition production and preproduction engines at the engine and vehicle level. The engines were applicable for vehicles 2000 to 3000 pounds in weight. The data obtained provided trade-offs between fuel economy, power...

The performance of a new ALICE prototype Pestov spark counter was measured both in dedicated test beam as well as in a high multiplicity heavy-ion environment. Results in terms of time resolution and background behaviour are presented. (orig.)

The process of formation of shock waves arising at a spark discharge is considered. According to analysis of experimental statistics the results of the various about dynamics of development of the spark channel are exposed to a doubt. The definition of a concept of time of formation of a shock wave is offered and its quantitative evaluation is carried out. It has allowed to distinguish the process of formation from the process of development of a shock wave,and also to explain the fact of formation of several shock waves at a spark discharge. The offered work can be put in a basis of a technique for evaluation of the intensity of a shock wave formed at a spark discharge.

A mathematical model of aerosol delivery from holding chambers (spacers) was developed incorporating tidal volume (VT), chamber volume (Vch), apparatus dead space (VD), effect of valve insufficiency and other leaks, loss of aerosol by immediate impact on the chamber wall, and fallout of aerosol...... in the chamber with time. Four different spacers were connected via filters to a mechanical lung model, and aerosol delivery during "breathing" was determined from drug recovery from the filters. The formula correctly predicted the delivery of budesonide aerosol from the AeroChamber (Trudell Medical, London......-mentioned factors, initial loss of aerosol by impact on the chamber wall is most important for the efficiency of a spacer. With a VT of 195 mL, the AeroChamber and Babyhaler were emptied in two breaths, the NebuChamber in four breaths, and the Nebuhaler in six breaths. Insufficiencies of the expiratory valves were...

Apache Spark is explored as a tool for analyzing large data sets from the magnetic fusion simulation code XGCI. Implementation details of Apache Spark on the NERSC Edison supercomputer are discussed, including binary file reading, and parameter setup. Here, an unsupervised machine learning algorithm, k-means clustering, is applied to XGCI particle distribution function data, showing that highly turbulent spatial regions do not have common coherent structures, but rather broad, ring-like structures in velocity space.

The paper discusses a possibilities of usage a simple alcohols to fuelling of spark ignition engines. Methanol and blends of methanol with glycerin, being a waste product from production of bio-components to fuels based on rapeseed oil, have been used in course of the investigations. The main objective of the research was to determine possibilities of utilization of glycerin to blending of engine fuels. The investigations have been performed using the Fiat 1100 MPI engine. Parameters obtained with the engine powered by pure methanol and by methanol- glycerin mixtures with 10÷30%vol content of glycerin were compared to parameters of the engine fuelled conventionally with the E95 gasoline. The investigations have shown increase of overall efficiency of the engine run on pure methanol with 2.5÷5.0%, and run on the mixture having 10% addition of glycerin with 2.0÷7.8%. Simultaneously, fuelling of the engine with the investigated alcohols results in reduced concentration of toxic components in exhaust gases like: CO, THC and NOx, as well as the greenhouse gas CO2.

Full Text Available The impact of high levels of EGR has been well documented to decrease fuel consumption and reduce emissions of spark ignition engines. But there are also many limitations associated with this technology like EGR control and tolerance, which can reduce the potential efficiency improvements. A new concept called D-EGR has been presented in which the exhaust from a sub group of power cylinders is channeled back to the intake of all the cylinders. In this literature review both experimental and numerical analysis of this technology is shown. In the former case experiments were performed on 2.0 L PFI engine with gasoline as a fuel in part and high load conditions and the results show that at part loads the D-EGR engine can lead to lower Brake Specific Fuel Consumption, lower HC and CO emissions and higher brake thermal efficiency. At high load operations the results show improved combustion stability and superior knock tolerance. In the numerical studies it shows comparable thermal efficiency with conventional SI engines and reduction in NOX emissions.

This paper aims to study the complex interaction between multiple bubbles, and to provide a summary and physical explanation of the phenomena observed during the interaction of two bubbles. High-speed photography is utilized to observe the experiments involving multiple spark-generated bubbles. Numerical simulations corresponding to the experiments are performed using the Boundary Element Method (BEM). The bubbles are typically between 3 and 5 mm in radius and are generated either in-phase (at the same time) or with phase differences. Complex phenomena are observed such as bubble splitting, and high-speed jetting inside a bubble caused by another collapsing bubble nearby (termed the ‘catapult’ effect). The two-bubble interactions are broadly classified in a graph according to two parameters: the relative inter-bubble distance and the phase difference (a new parameter introduced). The BEM simulations provide insight into the physics, such as bubble shape changes in detail, and jet velocities. Also presented in this paper are the experimental results of three bubble interactions. The interesting and complex observations of multiple bubble interaction are important for a better understanding of real life applications in medical ultrasonic treatment and ultrasonic cleaning. Many of the three bubble interactions can be explained by isolating bubble pairs and classifying their interaction according to the graph for the two bubble case. This graph can be a useful tool to predict the behavior of multiple bubble interactions.

Cobalt monosilicide is a cheap, environmentally friendly thermoelectric material for medium temperatures (200-700°C). While its power factor is similar to the state-of-the-art thermoelectric materials, its thermal conductivity is too large to reach high ZT values. Nanostructuring might be an interesting strategy to reduce the phonon mean free path thereby improving the thermoelectric performance. In this paper, we report on a 35% reduction of the thermal conductivity of n-type CoSi by a nanostructuring approach. CoSi nanostructured powders were synthesized by arc melting, followed by 4° h mechanical milling. By optimizing the spark plasma sintering thermal and pressure cycle, pellets with 5â€"10% porosity were obtained. During sintering, a small amount of Co2Si extra phase appeared and grains coarsened. After sintering, the pellets remained nanostructured, with an averaged grain size of 70 nm. The reduction of thermal conductivity is ascribed to a decrease in both the electronic and lattice contributions. The former is directly related to a decrease in the electrical conductivity, which appears to be the limiting factor preventing nanostructured CoSi from reaching enhanced thermoelectric performances.

Short spark discharges (2 μs) were successfully applied to generate mixed particles a few nanometres in diameter by fast quenching. Alloyed Cr-Co electrodes were applied to demonstrate this. Further it was shown that if the anode and the cathode are different materials, the discharge process mixes the vapour of both materials, forming mixed nanoparticles. Electron microscopy (TEM, SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses were performed on the collected particles to study their size, morphology, composition and structure. The average compositions of the particles were measured by inductively coupled plasma (ICP). In addition, online measurements of the particle size distribution by mobility analysis were carried out. In the case of alloyed electrodes (Cr-Co), the relative concentration of the elements in the nanoparticulate sample was consistent with the electrode composition. When using electrodes of different metals (Au-Pd and Ag-Pd) the individual nanoparticles showed a range of mixing ratios. No surface segregation was observed in these mixed noble metal particles. Crystalline nanoparticulate mixed phases were found in all cases.

Full Text Available The main goal of this paper is to improve the performance of the Fireworks Algorithm (FWA. To improve the performance of the FWA we propose three modifications: the first modification is to change the stopping criteria, this is to say, previously, the number of function evaluations was utilized as a stopping criteria, and we decided to change this to specify a particular number of iterations; the second and third modifications consist on introducing a dispersion metric (dispersion percent, and both modifications were made with the goal of achieving dynamic adaptation of the two parameters in the algorithm. The parameters that were controlled are the explosion amplitude and the number of sparks, and it is worth mentioning that the control of these parameters is based on a fuzzy logic approach. To measure the impact of these modifications, we perform experiments with 14 benchmark functions and a comparative study shows the advantage of the proposed approach. We decided to call the proposed algorithms Iterative Fireworks Algorithm (IFWA and two variants of the Dispersion Percent Iterative Fuzzy Fireworks Algorithm (DPIFWA-I and DPIFWA-II, respectively.

Full Text Available Spark plasma sintering (SPS, initially developed as an advanced sintering technique for consolidating nanopowders into nanostructured bulk materials, has been recently looked at in much broader perspective and gained a strong reputation of a versatile method of solid state processing of metals, ceramics, and composites. The powders in the SPS-dies experience the action of pulsed electric current and uniaxial pressure; they are heated at very high rates unachievable in furnace heating and sintered within shorter times and at lower temperatures than in conventional methods. The principle of SPS and convenient design of the facilities make it attractive for conducting solid state synthesis. In this paper, based on our own results and the literature data, we analyze the microstructure formation of the products of chemical reactions occurring in the SPS in an attempt to formulate the requirements to the microstructure parameters of reactant mixtures and SPS conditions that should be fulfilled in order to produce a nanostructured material. We present successful syntheses of nanostructured ceramics and metal matrix composite with nanosized reinforcements in terms of microstructure stability and attractive properties of the materials and discuss the challenges of making a dense nanostructured material when reaction and densification do not coincide during the SPS. In the final part of the paper, we provide an outlook on the further uses of reactive SPS in the synthesis of nanostructured materials.

Processing in the powder metallurgy route has emerged as an economical process for the production of near net shaped components with a wide range of desired mechanical properties suitable for various applications of industrial needs. This research work was conducted with an objective of studying the improvisation of density and hardness of Copper-Aluminium alloy prepared by spark plasma sintering. Cu-Al alloy with a composition of 95% copper and 5% aluminium was prepared by SPS process. SPS is a low voltage, DC pulse current activated, pressure-assisted sintering, which enables sintering at lower temperatures and shorter durations. The combination offered by Cu-Al alloy of high strength and high corrosion resistance results their applications under a wide variety of conditions. The density and hardness of the prepared sample were measured by conducting appropriate tests. Apparently, the values of hardness and density of the specimen prepared by SPS seemed to be better than that of conventional sintering. The experimental procedure, testing methodologies and analysis are presented.

Although cloud chambers are highly regarded as teaching aids for radiation education, school teachers have difficulty in using cloud chambers because they have to prepare dry ice or liquid nitrogen before the experiment. We developed a very simple and inexpensive cloud chamber that uses the contents of gel ice packs which can substitute for dry…

The vacuum chamber at intersection region I-6, one of these where experiments in colliding-beam physics will be taking place. The "wheels" prevent the thin wall (1.5 mm) of the chamber from collapsing. The chamber is equipped with heating tapes and its wrapped in thermal insulation. Residual gas pressure at this and other similar regions is around 10_11.

The wake fields of a bunched beam caused by the resistivity of the chamber walls are investigated for a vacuum chamber with elliptical cross section. The longitudinal and transverse impedances are calculated for arbitrary energies and for an arbitrary position of the beam in the chamber. (orig.)

A prototype aluminum extruded vacuum chamber for an undulator straight section of the Advanced Photon Source is described. The 52.-m long vacuum system is designed so that the undulator gap variation does not interfere with it. The chamber is gripped in a stiff close toleranced mounting structure to insure dimensional tolerance of the chamber height

Ca2+ sparks are short lived and localized Ca2+ transients resulting from the opening of ryanodine receptors in sarcoplasmic reticulum. These events relax certain types of smooth muscle by activating big conductance Ca2+-activated K+ channels to produce spontaneous transient outward currents (STOCs) and the resultant closure of voltage-dependent Ca2+ channels. But in many smooth muscles from a variety of organs, Ca2+ sparks can additionally activate Ca2+-activated Cl(-) channels to generate spontaneous transient inward current (STICs). To date, the physiological roles of Ca2+ sparks in this latter group of smooth muscle remain elusive. Here, we show that in airway smooth muscle, Ca2+ sparks under physiological conditions, activating STOCs and STICs, induce biphasic membrane potential transients (BiMPTs), leading to membrane potential oscillations. Paradoxically, BiMPTs stabilize the membrane potential by clamping it within a negative range and prevent the generation of action potentials. Moreover, blocking either Ca2+ sparks or hyperpolarization components of BiMPTs activates voltage-dependent Ca2+ channels, resulting in an increase in global [Ca2+](i) and cell contraction. Therefore, Ca2+ sparks in smooth muscle presenting both STICs and STOCs act as a stabilizer of membrane potential, and altering the balance can profoundly alter the status of excitability and contractility. These results reveal a novel mechanism underlying the control of excitability and contractility in smooth muscle.

Electrostatic septa (ZS) are used in the extraction of the particle beams from the CERN SPS to the North Area experimental zone. These septa employ high electric fields, generated from a 300 kV power supply, and are particularly prone to internal sparking around the cathode structure. This sparking degrades the electric field quality, consequently affecting the extracted beam, vacuum and equipment performance. To mitigate these effects, a Spark Detection System (SDS) has been realised, which is based on an industrial SIEMENS S7-400 programmable logic controller and deported Boolean processor modules interfaced through a PROFINET fieldbus. The SDS interlock logic uses a moving average spark rate count to determine if the ZS performance is acceptable. Below a certain spark rate it is probable that the ZS septa tank vacuum can recover, thus avoiding transition into a state where rapid degradation would occur. Above this level an interlock is raised and the high voltage is switched off. Additionally, all spark si...

The ISO Standard 1757 ''Personnel Photographic Film Dosemeters'', issued in June 1980, is briefly described. UVVVR's own dosemeter developed for use in the national film dosimetry service in Czechoslovakia is evaluated in relation to this ISO Standard. (author)

The high event and particle rates expected for ISABELLE intersecting storage rings raise the question whether PWC's and drift chambers, now widely in use in experiments, still can operate under such conditions. Various effects depend on the number of avalanches produced per length of wire N and the size of the avalanche Q, i.e., on the number of positive ions created in an avalanche. Therefore the important parameter for the following discussion is the product QN. The minimum Q is determined by the type and noise level of preamplifiers used. Examples are given for a typical low noise amplifier as well as for a typical integrated ''cheap'' amplifier. The rate/wire length N depends on the chamber arrangement, wire spacing, etc. In multiwire drift chambers, a single wire shows space-charge effects reducing the pulse height by 1% at a rate of N = 7 x 10 3 mm -1 sec -1 . At a rate of N approximately equal to 10 5 mm -1 sec -1 an efficiency loss of the order of 1% was noticed. The aging effect due to deposits on the anode wire can be reduced using low noise amplifiers and low gas gain to such an extent that a lifetime of about half a year at ISABELLE can be expected. The use of conventional cheap preamplifiers will result in a typical lifetime of about 30 days. Improvements are probable. The time resolution of Δt/sub r/ = 4 nsec fwhm seems adequate for event rates of 10 7 sec -1 . The memory time Δt/sub m/ greater than or equal to 100 nsec may cause serious problems for pattern recognition depending on layout and readout. The use of induced signals on cathode pads, thus reading out shorter parts of the wire, can solve the problem

Full Text Available An integrated experimental and Large-Eddy Simulation (LES study is presented for homogeneous premixed combustion in a spark-ignition engine. The engine is a single-cylinder two-valve optical research engine with transparent liner and piston: the Transparent Combustion Chamber (TCC engine. This is a relatively simple, open engine configuration that can be used for LES model development and validation by other research groups. Pressure-based combustion analysis, optical diagnostics and LES have been combined to generate new physical insight into the early stages of combustion. The emphasis has been on developing strategies for making quantitative comparisons between high-speed/high-resolution optical diagnostics and LES using common metrics for both the experiments and the simulations, and focusing on the important early flame development period. Results from two different LES turbulent combustion models are presented, using the same numerical methods and computational mesh. Both models yield Cycle-to-Cycle Variations (CCV in combustion that are higher than what is observed in the experiments. The results reveal strengths and limitations of the experimental diagnostics and the LES models, and suggest directions for future diagnostic and simulation efforts. In particular, it has been observed that flame development between the times corresponding to the laminar-to-turbulent transition and 1% mass-burned fraction are especially important in establishing the subsequent combustion event for each cycle. This suggests a range of temporal and spatial scales over which future experimental and simulation efforts should focus.

The purpose of these investigations into photographic emulsion dosimetry is to attempt to use the photographic emulsion to mimic the response of human tissues to high LET radiations. The program therefore requires that a systematic understanding of the response of mammalian cells to ionizing radiations be achieved. We have been concerned with differences in RBE and in radiation response to both high and LET radiations, and in the interrelationship between observations with these different radiations

The use of nontoxic propellants in future exploration vehicles would enable safer, more cost-effective mission scenarios. One promising green alternative to existing hypergols is liquid methane (LCH4) with liquid oxygen (LO2). A 100 lbf LO2/LCH4 engine was developed under the NASA Propulsion and Cryogenic Advanced Development project and tested at the NASA Glenn Research Center Altitude Combustion Stand in a low pressure environment. High ignition energy is a perceived drawback of this propellant combination; so this ignition margin test program examined ignition performance versus delivered spark energy. Sensitivity of ignition to spark timing and repetition rate was also explored. Three different exciter units were used with the engine s augmented (torch) igniter. Captured waveforms indicated spark behavior in hot fire conditions was inconsistent compared to the well-behaved dry sparks. This suggests that rising pressure and flow rate increase spark impedance and may at some point compromise an exciter s ability to complete each spark. The reduced spark energies of such quenched deliveries resulted in more erratic ignitions, decreasing ignition probability. The timing of the sparks relative to the pressure/flow conditions also impacted the probability of ignition. Sparks occurring early in the flow could trigger ignition with energies as low as 1 to 6 mJ, though multiple, similarly timed sparks of 55 to 75 mJ were required for reliable ignition. Delayed spark application and reduced spark repetition rate both correlated with late and occasional failed ignitions. An optimum time interval for spark application and ignition therefore coincides with propellant introduction to the igniter.

The vessel of the Big European Bubble Chamber, BEBC, was installed at the beginning of the 1970s. The large stainless-steel vessel, measuring 3.7 metres in diameter and 4 metres in height, was filled with 35 cubic metres of liquid (hydrogen, deuterium or a neon-hydrogen mixture), whose sensitivity was regulated by means of a huge piston weighing 2 tonnes. During each expansion, the trajectories of the charged particles were marked by a trail of bubbles, where liquid reached boiling point as they passed through it. The first images were recorded in 1973 when BEBC, equipped with the largest superconducting magnet in service at the time, first received beam from the PS. In 1977, the bubble chamber was exposed to neutrino and hadron beams at higher energies of up to 450 GeV after the SPS came into operation. By the end of its active life in 1984, BEBC had delivered a total of 6.3 million photographs to 22 experiments devoted to neutrino or hadron physics. Around 600 scient...

Remote sensing data and climate model output are multi-dimensional arrays of massive sizes locked away in heterogeneous file formats (HDF5/4, NetCDF 3/4) and metadata models (HDF-EOS, CF) making it difficult to perform multi-stage, iterative science processing since each stage requires writing and reading data to and from disk. We have developed SciSpark, a robust Big Data framework, that extends ApacheTM Spark for scaling scientific computations. Apache Spark improves the map-reduce implementation in ApacheTM Hadoop for parallel computing on a cluster, by emphasizing in-memory computation, "spilling" to disk only as needed, and relying on lazy evaluation. Central to Spark is the Resilient Distributed Dataset (RDD), an in-memory distributed data structure that extends the functional paradigm provided by the Scala programming language. However, RDDs are ideal for tabular or unstructured data, and not for highly dimensional data. The SciSpark project introduces the Scientific Resilient Distributed Dataset (sRDD), a distributed-computing array structure which supports iterative scientific algorithms for multidimensional data. SciSpark processes data stored in NetCDF and HDF files by partitioning them across time or space and distributing the partitions among a cluster of compute nodes. We show usability and extensibility of SciSpark by implementing distributed algorithms for geospatial operations on large collections of multi-dimensional grids. In particular we address the problem of scaling an automated method for finding Mesoscale Convective Complexes. SciSpark provides a tensor interface to support the pluggability of different matrix libraries. We evaluate performance of the various matrix libraries in distributed pipelines, such as Nd4jTM and BreezeTM. We detail the architecture and design of SciSpark, our efforts to integrate climate science algorithms, parallel ingest and partitioning (sharding) of A-Train satellite observations from model grids. These

Ion losses due to initial recombination, volume recombination, and back diffusion were each determined by measurements and calculations for different size cylindrical ionization chambers and spherical ionization chambers. By measuring signal currents from these ionization chambers irradiated with 60 Co gamma rays, two groups of ion losses were obtained. (Group 1) Ion loss due to initial recombination and diffusion, which changes proportionally to the inverse of the voltage applied to the ionization chambers; (and group 2) ion loss due to volume recombination, which changes proportionally to the inverse of the square of the applied voltage. The diffusion loss was obtained separately by computing electric field distributions in the ionization chambers. It was found that diffusion loss is larger than initial recombination loss for the cylindrical ionization chambers and vise versa for the spherical ionization chambers

conditions, and the environment can be carefully controlled and easily changed. The protocols in this unit include construction of the flow chamber and the bubble trap, assembly and sterilization of the flow chamber system, inoculation of the flow chambers, running of the system, image capture and analysis......This unit describes the setup of flow chamber systems for the study of microbial biofilms, and methods for the analysis of structural biofilm formation. Use of flow chambers allows direct microscopic investigation of biofilm formation. The biofilms in flow chambers develop under hydrodynamic......, and disassembly and cleaning of the system. In addition, embedding and fluorescent in situ hybridization of flow chamber-grown biofilms are addressed....

Argonne National Laboratory-West (ANL-W) is participating in the Department of Energy's (DOE) National Transuranic Waste Program in support of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The Laboratory's support currently consists of intrusive characterization of a selected population of drums containing transuranic waste. This characterization is performed in a complex of alpha containment gloveboxes termed the Waste Characterization Gloveboxes. Made up of the Waste Characterization Chamber, Sample Preparation Glovebox, and the Equipment Repair Glovebox, they were designed as a small production characterization facility for support of the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL). This paper presents salient features of these gloveboxes

An engineering study was performed to determine the most effective method for decontamination of the Nova target chamber. Manual and remote decontamination methods currently being used were surveyed. In addition, a concept that may not require in-situ decontamination was investigated. Based on the presently available information concerning material and system compatibility and particle penetration, it is recommended that a system of removable aluminum shields be considered. It is also recommended that a series of tests be performed to more precisely determine the vacuum compatibility and penetrability of other materials discussed in this report

Full Text Available Ocular involvement with Gnathostoma spinigerum occurs years after the initial infection that is acquired by ingestion of poorly cooked, pickled seafood or water contaminated with third stage larvae. Here we report a case of gnathostomiasis of the left eye of a 32-year-old lady hailing from Meghalaya, India. Her vision had deteriorated to hand movement. Slit lamp examination revealed a live, actively motile worm in the anterior chamber, which was extracted by supra temporal limbal incision and visual acuity was restored.

An experimental work made on drift chambers is described in two chapters. In the firt chapter we present the description of the experimental installation used, as well as some details on the data adquisition systems and the characteristics on three ways used for calibration proposes (cosmic muons, β radiation and test beam using SPS at CERN facilities). The second chapter describes the defferent prototypes studied. The experimental set up and the analysis are given. Some results are discussed. The magnetic field effect is also studied. (Author)

A lanthana-containing nanostructured ferritic steel (NFS) was processed via mechanical alloying (MA) of Fe-14Cr-1Ti-0.3Mo-0.5La{sub 2}O{sub 3} (wt.%) and consolidated via spark plasma sintering (SPS). In order to study the consolidation behavior via SPS, sintering temperature and dwell time were correlated with microstructure, density, microhardness and shear yield strength of the sintered specimens. A bimodal grain size distribution including both micron-sized and nano-sized grains was observed in the microstructure of specimens sintered at 850, 950 and1050 °C for 45 min. Significant densification occurred at temperatures greater than 950 °C with a relative density higher than 98%. A variety of nanoparticles, some enriched in Fe and Cr oxides and copious nanoparticles smaller than 10 nm with faceted morphology and enriched in La and Ti oxides were observed. After SPS at 950 °C, the number density of Cr–Ti–La–O-enriched nanoclusters with an average radius of 1.5 nm was estimated to be 1.2 × 10{sup 24} m{sup −3}. The La + Ti:O ratio was close to 1 after SPS at 950 and 1050 °C; however, the number density of nanoclusters decreased at 1050 °C. With SPS above 950 °C, the density improved but the microhardness and shear yield strength decreased due to partial coarsening of the grains and nanoparticles.

Full Text Available We plan to create a method of clustering a social network graph. For testing the method there is a need to generate a graph similar in structure to existing social networks. The article presents an algorithm for the graph distributed generation. We took into account basic properties such as power-law distribution of the users communities number, dense intersections of the social networks and others. This algorithm also considers the problems that are present in similar works of other authors, for example, the multiple edges problem in the generation process. A special feature of the created algorithm is the implementation depending on the communities number parameter rather than on the connected users number as it is done in other works. It is connected with a peculiarity of progressing the existing social network structure. There are properties of its graph in the paper. We described a table containing the variables needed for the algorithm. A step-by-step generation algorithm was compiled. Appropriate mathematical parameters were calculated for it. A generation is performed in a distributed way by Apache Spark framework. It was described in detail how the tasks division with the help of this framework runs. The Erdos-Renyi model for random graphs is used in the algorithm. It is the most suitable and easy one to implement. The main advantages of the created method are the small amount of resources in comparison with other similar generators and execution speed. Speed is achieved through distributed work and the fact that in any time network users have their own unique numbers and are ordered by these numbers, so there is no need to sort them out. The designed algorithm will promote not only the eﬃcient clustering method creation. It can be useful in other development areas connected, for example, with the social networks search engines.

Nanosecond repetitively pulsed (NRP) spark discharges have been studied in atmospheric pressure air preheated to 1000 K. Measurements of spark initiation and stability, plasma dynamics, gas temperature and current-voltage characteristics of the spark regime are presented. Using 10 ns pulses applied repetitively at 30 kHz, we find that 2-400 pulses are required to initiate the spark, depending on the applied voltage. Furthermore, about 30-50 pulses are required for the spark discharge to reach steady state, following initiation. Based on space- and time-resolved optical emission spectroscopy, the spark discharge in steady state is found to ignite homogeneously in the discharge gap, without evidence of an initial streamer. Using measured emission from the N 2 (C-B) 0-0 band, it is found that the gas temperature rises by several thousand Kelvin in the span of about 30 ns following the application of the high-voltage pulse. Current-voltage measurements show that up to 20-40 A of conduction current is generated, which corresponds to an electron number density of up to 10 15 cm -3 towards the end of the high-voltage pulse. The discharge dynamics, gas temperature and electron number density are consistent with a streamer-less spark that develops homogeneously through avalanche ionization in volume. This occurs because the pre-ionization electron number density of about 10 11 cm -3 produced by the high frequency train of pulses is above the critical density for streamer-less discharge development, which is shown to be about 10 8 cm -3 .

Nanosecond repetitively pulsed (NRP) spark discharges have been studied in atmospheric pressure air preheated to 1000 K. Measurements of spark initiation and stability, plasma dynamics, gas temperature and current-voltage characteristics of the spark regime are presented. Using 10 ns pulses applied repetitively at 30 kHz, we find that 2-400 pulses are required to initiate the spark, depending on the applied voltage. Furthermore, about 30-50 pulses are required for the spark discharge to reach steady state, following initiation. Based on space- and time-resolved optical emission spectroscopy, the spark discharge in steady state is found to ignite homogeneously in the discharge gap, without evidence of an initial streamer. Using measured emission from the N2 (C-B) 0-0 band, it is found that the gas temperature rises by several thousand Kelvin in the span of about 30 ns following the application of the high-voltage pulse. Current-voltage measurements show that up to 20-40 A of conduction current is generated, which corresponds to an electron number density of up to 1015 cm-3 towards the end of the high-voltage pulse. The discharge dynamics, gas temperature and electron number density are consistent with a streamer-less spark that develops homogeneously through avalanche ionization in volume. This occurs because the pre-ionization electron number density of about 1011 cm-3 produced by the high frequency train of pulses is above the critical density for streamer-less discharge development, which is shown to be about 108 cm-3.

ATLAS (A Large Toroidal LHC Apparatus) will be a general-purpose experiment at the Large Hadron Collider that will be operational at CERN in the year 2004. The ATLAS muon spectrometer aims for a momentum resolution of 10% for a transverse momentum of pT=1TeV. The precision tracking devices in the muon system will be high pressure drift tubes (MDTs) with a single wire resolution of 1100 chambers covering an area of ≈ 2500m2. The high counting rates in the spectrometer as well as the aim for excellent spatial resolution and high efficiency put severe constraints on the MDT operating parameters. This work describes a detailed study of all the resolution limiting factors in the ATLAS environment. A ’full chain’ simulation of the MDT response to photons and charged particles as well as quantitative comparisons with measurements was performed. The good agreement between simulation and measurements resulted in a profound understanding of the drift chamber processes and the individual contributions to the spat...

To improve neutron imaging resolution, we have developed a general imaging design tool for inertial confinement fusion facilities that can simulate aperture errors, generate arbitrary neutron source distributions, simulate arbitrary aperture shapes, calculate point-spread functions using ray tracing, and reconstruct source images using a variety of filter functions. Predicted system performance can be compared to various concepts before construction. This software design tool is being developed for the UR/LLE OMEGA laser and the NIF as part of a process to design and build an imaging system based on a bubble chamber detectorootnotetextR. A. Lerche et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 74, 1709 (2003). for the UR/LLE OMEGA laser. This talk will present the latest results on aperture contributions to system performance and review the conceptual design of the bubble chamber-based imaging system, its conceptual design being reviewed in the second part of the presentation. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Inertial Confinement Fusion under Cooperative Agreement No. DE-FC52-92SF19460.

This Monitored Drift Tube detector, consisting of argon-CO2-filled aluminium tubes with a wire down the centre of each, will track muons in ATLAS; Tiecke used a single tube from one of these detectors to create the pipes in his organ. Particle physicists can make good musicians; but did you know particle detectors can make good music? That's what NIKHEF physicist Henk Tiecke learned when he used pipes cut from the ATLAS Monitored Drift Tube detector (MDT) to build his own working Dutch-style barrel organ in the autumn of 2005. 'I like to work with my hands,' said Tiecke, who worked as a senior physicist at NIKHEF, Amsterdam, on ZEUS until his retirement last summer. Tiecke had already constructed his barrel organ when he visited some colleagues in the ATLAS muon chambers production area at Nikhef in 2005. He noticed that the aluminium tubes they were using to build the chambers were about three centimetres in diameter-just the right size for a pipe in a barrel organ. 'The sound is not as nice as from wooden...

Internal Combustion of Engines: A Detailed Introduction to the Thermodynamics of Spark and Compression Ignition Engines, Their Design and Development focuses on the design, development, and operations of spark and compression ignition engines. The book first describes internal combustion engines, including rotary, compression, and indirect or spark ignition engines. The publication then discusses basic thermodynamics and gas dynamics. Topics include first and second laws of thermodynamics; internal energy and enthalpy diagrams; gas mixtures and homocentric flow; and state equation. The text ta

Microstructural and optical spectroscopic analyses were carried out on as-received and used spark plugs after field service in natural gas (NG) reciprocating engines. The objective of this work was to examine the corrosion and erosion mechanisms of natural gas engine spark plug as well as identify the primary life limiting processes during field operation. The optical emission spectroscopic analysis showed a strong Ca signal in the exposed spark plugs and scanning electron microscopy showed substantial formation of Ca-enriched glassy oxide phase(s) on the electrode surfaces. In addition, intergranular cracking was observed in the subsurface region of both iridium (Ir) and platinum-tungsten (Pt-W) alloy electrode insert tips. The coalescence and subsequent growth of these cracks would accelerate the wear of the electrodes and shorten the lifetime of the spark plugs. Also, extensive internal oxidation and subsequent crack generation occurred along the interface between Ni-base alloy electrode and Pt-W alloy tip insert during field service, which would result in substantial degradation in the ignitability and performance of the electrodes, and thus spark plug failure.

Full Text Available Next-generation sequencing (NGS technologies have led to a huge amount of genomic data that need to be analyzed and interpreted. This fact has a huge impact on the DNA sequence alignment process, which nowadays requires the mapping of billions of small DNA sequences onto a reference genome. In this way, sequence alignment remains the most time-consuming stage in the sequence analysis workflow. To deal with this issue, state of the art aligners take advantage of parallelization strategies. However, the existent solutions show limited scalability and have a complex implementation. In this work we introduce SparkBWA, a new tool that exploits the capabilities of a big data technology as Spark to boost the performance of one of the most widely adopted aligner, the Burrows-Wheeler Aligner (BWA. The design of SparkBWA uses two independent software layers in such a way that no modifications to the original BWA source code are required, which assures its compatibility with any BWA version (future or legacy. SparkBWA is evaluated in different scenarios showing noticeable results in terms of performance and scalability. A comparison to other parallel BWA-based aligners validates the benefits of our approach. Finally, an intuitive and flexible API is provided to NGS professionals in order to facilitate the acceptance and adoption of the new tool. The source code of the software described in this paper is publicly available at https://github.com/citiususc/SparkBWA, with a GPL3 license.

Despite progress in narrowing the gender gap, fewer women than men pursue science careers. Adolescence is a critical age when girls' science interest is sparked or smothered. Prior research provides data on who drops out of the "science pipeline" and when, but few studies examine why and how girls disconnect from science. This thesis is an in-depth exploratory study of adolescent girls' relationships with science based on a series of interviews with four middle-class Caucasian girls---two from public schools, two homeschooled. The girls' stones about their experiences with, feelings about, and perspectives on science, the science process, and their science learning environments are examined with a theoretical and analytic approach grounded in relational psychology. The potential link between girls' voices and their involvement in science is investigated. Results indicate that girls' relationships with science are multitiered. Science is engaging and familiar in the sense that girls are curious about the world, enjoy learning about scientific phenomena, and informally use science in their everyday fives. However, the girls in this study differentiated between the science they do and the field of science, which they view as a mostly male endeavor (often despite real life experiences to the contrary) that uses rather rigid methods to investigate questions of limited scope and interest. In essence, how these girls defined science defined their relationship with science: those with narrow conceptions of science felt distant from it. Adolescent girls' decreased involvement in science activities may be a relational act---a move away from a patriarchical process, pedagogy, and institution that does not resonate with their experiences, questions, and learning styles. Girls often feel like outsiders to science; they resist considering science careers when they have concerns that implicitly or explicitly, doing so would involve sacrificing their knowledge, creativity, or

Detector applications in Nuclear Safeguards and Waste Management have included measuring neutrons from fission and (alpha,n) reactions with well-moderated neutron proportional counters, often embedded in a slab of polyethylene. Other less-moderated geometries are useful for detecting both bare and moderated fission-source neutrons with good efficiency. The neutron chamber is an undermoderated detector design comprising a large, hollow, polyethylene-walled chamber containing one or more proportional counters. Neutron-chamber detectors are relatively inexpensive; can have large apertures, usually through a thin chamber wall; and offer very good detection efficiency per dollar. Neutron-chamber detectors have also been used for monitoring vehicles and for assaying large crates of transuranic waste. Our Monte Carlo calculations for a new application (monitoring low-density waste for concealed plutonium) illustrate the advantages of the hollow-chamber design for detecting moderated fission sources. 9 refs., 6 figs., 2 tabs

A mathematical model of aerosol delivery from holding chambers (spacers) was developed incorporating tidal volume (VT), chamber volume (Vch), apparatus dead space (VD), effect of valve insufficiency and other leaks, loss of aerosol by immediate impact on the chamber wall, and fallout of aerosol...... in the chamber with time. Four different spacers were connected via filters to a mechanical lung model, and aerosol delivery during "breathing" was determined from drug recovery from the filters. The formula correctly predicted the delivery of budesonide aerosol from the AeroChamber (Trudell Medical, London......, Ontario, Canada), NebuChamber (Astra, Södirtälje, Sweden) and Nebuhaler (Astra) adapted for babies. The dose of fluticasone proportionate delivered by the Babyhaler (Glaxco Wellcome, Oxbridge, Middlesex, UK) was 80% of that predicted, probably because of incomplete priming of this spacer. Of the above...

A 71 cm diameter 74 cm length boron/epoxy composite rocket motor chamber was designed based on the geometric configuration of the JPL Applications Technology Satellite titanium alloy apogee motor chamber. Because analyses showed large stress concentrations in the domes, the configuration was modified using the same basic constraints for openings and attachments. The rocket motor chamber was then fabricated by filament winding with boron/epoxy tape and hydrostatically tested to failure at 264 N/sq cm, 57.2 N/sq cm above the design value. Two more rocket motor chambers were fabricated with the same basic constraints, but shortened to 57.6 cm for a smaller propellant load. The first of these short chambers failed in proof because of filament winding fabrication difficulties. The second chamber was successfully fabricated and passed the hydrostatic proof test.

Photography is a unique rapidly growing interdisciplinary field encompassing aspects of science, art and technology. Expectations of photographers are steadily increasing with the development of technology. One of the areas playing a crucial role in photography is lighting. Consequently, several types of light sources for photographic use have been developed. The ongoing research in this field concentrates on lamps with tunable CCT (Correlated Color Temperature). In this paper, we present a lamp, which emission spectrum can be tailored without affecting the output luminous ux. Intended for photographic uses, the lamp is based on an integrating sphere and a selection of LEDs. As the LED drivers, DC-DC converters controlled by a Raspberry PI were applied. Design process, including the selection of LED wavelengths, is presented. Output characteristics of the lamp were measured using the setup containing the spectrometer. The results of these experiments show good agreement with the spectrum set on the microcomputer.

Full Text Available This paper proposes a relational history of media artifacts, which decentralizes the dominance of the photographer or filmmaker as the absolute author of the work. It adds an alternative account to understanding the creative process and the subsequent study of media forms by discussing film and photographic practices as the reciprocal affective relationship between the maker, their intentions, materials, technologies, non-human agents and the environment. By reorganizing the anthropocentrism of art historical narratives, which typically exclude corporeality and materiality as drivers of human history, we are able to discuss the complex dynamic meshwork of determinants that bring photographic artifacts into existence: the lived, animate, vital materialism at once emergent and mixing of different causalities and temporalities.

A unique photographic record of all living Nobel laureates. In this handsome coffee-table book, photographer Peter Badge captures the likeness of every living Nobel laureate in a lasting black-and-white image -- more than 300 striking portraits in all. Brief biographical sketches accompanying the large-scale photographs pay homage to each laureate's singular contribution to science, literature or world peace. Bringing readers face-to-face with Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, the Dalai Lama, James Watson, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Linda Buck, and Paul Samuelson among many others, NOBELS offers an intimate and compelling look at well-known honorees as well as lesser-known recipients. A fascinating word/image tableau.

A Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is under construction for the TOPAZ e + e - experiment at TRISTAN. The dimension of the TPC is 260 cm in diameter and 300 cm in axial length. Fin-type fine field cages are set inside GFRP insulator cylinders which also serve as the pressure container. The sector is made of multilayer G10 boards for better electric and thermal isolation. The cathode pads are substantially larger in area than those of the PEP4-TPC and having zigzag-shaped boundary. These serve to maintain high spatial resolution with fewer number of pad channels. Signals are amplified by low noise preamplifiers and shaping amplifiers, and, stored and digitized by FASTBUS based CCD-digitizers. Digitized information is preprocessed and sent to VAX-11/780 at a rate 2 MHz per 32 bit word. Nitrogen LASER beam will be used extensively with the LASER beacon system for calibration. Test results on production prototypes are also reported. (orig.)

The picture chamber for a radiographic system is characterised by a base, a first electrode carried in the base, an X-ray irradiation window provided with an outer plate and an inner plate and a conducting surface which serves as a second electrode, which has a plate gripping it at each adjacent edge and which has at the sides a space which is occupied by a filling material, maintained at a steady pressure, by means of the mounting against the base and wherein the inner plate lies against the first electrode and which is provided with a split, and with means for the separation of the split in the area of the inner plate so that a fluid may be retained in the split. (G.C.)

One of the three X-ray detectors of the CAST experiment searching for solar axions is a Time Projection Chamber (TPC) with a multi-wire proportional counter (MWPC) as a readout structure. Its design has been optimized to provide high sensitivity to the detection of the low intensity X-ray signal expected in the CAST experiment. A low hardware threshold of 0.8 keV is safely set during normal data taking periods, and the overall efficiency for the detection of photons coming from conversion of solar axions is 62 %. Shielding has been installed around the detector, lowering the background level to 4.10 x 10^-5 counts/cm^2/s/keV between 1 and 10 keV. During phase I of the CAST experiment the TPC has provided robust and stable operation, thus contributing with a competitive result to the overall CAST limit on axion-photon coupling and mass.

The construction and performance of 12' x 12' flash chambers used in a 340 ton neutrino detector under construction at Fermilab is described. The flash chambers supply digital information with a spatial resolution of 0.2'', and are used to finely sample the shower development of the reaction products of neutrino interactions. The flash chambers are easy and inexpensive to build and are electronically read out

To minimize eddy currents, induced by the rising magnetic field, the chamber was made from thin stainless steel of high specific electric resistance. For mechanical stength, it was corrugated in a hydro-forming process. The chamber is curved, to follow the beam's orbital path. Under vacuum, the chamber tends to staighten, the ceramic spacer along half of its length keeps it in place (see also 7402458).

We discuss drift chamber tracking with a commercial log VLSI neural network chip. Voltages proportional to the drift times in a 4-layer drift chamber were presented to the Intel ETANN chip. The network was trained to provide the intercept and slope of straight tracks traversing the chamber. The outputs were recorded and later compared off line to conventional track fits. Two types of network architectures were studied. Applications of neural network tracking to high energy physics detector triggers is discussed

A curriculum of an integrated learning using power of photography in the junior highschool was constructed, and was experimented in the class "Seminar for Photographic Expression" of the integrated learning at a junior high school. The center of the curriculum is viewing photographs and self-expression using photography. By comparing the results of questionnaires investigation between before and after the class it is suggested that the curriculum brings about increase in self-esteem, empathy, and motivation for learning. This educational effect is really to foster ability to live self-sufficient lives. On the basis of these results curriculums which can be conducted by anyone at every junior highschool were proposed.

Built in 1969, the anechoic chamber of CRL has been used to the fullest by researchers in many fields such as EMI, EMC, antenna design, standard of electric field intensity, and type approval testing. In particular, in the early days of space development in Japan, many satellite-born antennas were developed in this anechoic chamber. However, a quarter of a century has passed since its construction and deteriorated performance due to superannuation sometimes caused difficulties in experiments conducted in the chamber. In 1993, CRL constructed a Measuring Facility for Radio Research (MFRR) and the anechoic chamber for VHF-UHF bands was remodeled as one of the sub-facilities of MFRR. The remodeling work included full replacement of the electromagnetic shielding, absorbers and measurement system. Since the remodeled anechoic chamber is being used not only for EMI tests but also for other purposes, a full-anechoic chamber has been adopted. In addition the chamber has been designed for the frequency range between 30 MHz and 10 GHz. After the remodeling work, the performance of the chamber is greatly improved. The average shielding factor is better than 85 dB for all frequency ranges and the unwanted reflection characteristic is -30 dB for frequencies above 1 GHZ. This paper summarizes the remodeling work, and the specifications and performance of the remodeled anechoic chamber.

This is one of the bicone chambers made of titanium for experiment R 702. The central corrugated part had a very thin titanium wall (0.28 mm). The first of these chambers collapsed in its central part when baked at 300 C (August 1975). After an intensive effort to develop better quality and reproducible welds for this special material, the ISR workshop was able to build two new chambers of this type. One of them was installed at I 7 for R 702 in 1976 and worked perfectly. It was at that time the most "transparent" intersection vacuum chamber. See also 7609219, 7609221.

The paper presents results of CH4 emission measurements at peatland with the application of the dynamic chamber technique. The measurements were conducted in two types of chambers differing in shape, height, volume and technology used to assure their tightness. The study tested how the following factors: 1) forced chamber headspace mixing or its absence, 2) mistakes of the person conducting measurements, 3) improper application of linear technique for calculating CH4 fluxes, and 4) simulated air sampling typical for static chambers, influence the significance of errors and the underestimation rate of CH4 fluxes measured in situ. It was indicated that chamber headspace mixing allows estimating methane fluxes with a smaller error than in the case of measurements conducted without mixing, and CH4 fluxes in such conditions can be 47 to 58% higher (depending on the chamber type) than in a chamber without fans. Using dynamic chambers and a fast analyzer to measure methane fluxes allows shortening the methane measurement process to a few minutes. On the other hand, using static chambers for methane flux measurements may lead to 70% underestimation of the calculated flux.

We have completed constructing and begun operating the Mark II Drift Chamber Vertex Detector. The chamber, based on a modified jet cell design, achieves 30 μm spatial resolution and 2 gas mixtures. Special emphasis has been placed on controlling systematic errors including the use of novel construction techniques which permit accurate wire placement. Chamber performance has been studied with cosmic ray tracks collected with the chamber located both inside and outside the Mark II. Results on spatial resolution, average pulse shape, and some properties of CO 2 mixtures are presented. 10 refs., 12 figs., 1 tab

The performance of the completed DO central tracking chamber was studied using cosmic rays at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Also studied was a prototype tracking chamber identical in design to the completed DO tracking chamber. The prototype chamber was exposed to a collimated beam of 150 GeV pions at the Fermilab NWA test facility. Results indicate an RΦ tracking resolution compatible with the limitations imposed by physical considerations, excellent 2 track resolution, and a high track reconstruction efficiency along with a good rejection power against γ → e + e - events

We analyze the experimental time series of internal pressure in a four cylinder spark ignition engine. In our experiment, performed for different spark advance angles, apart from the usual cyclic changes of engine pressure we observed additional oscillations. These oscillations are with longer time scales ranging from one to several hundred engine cycles depending on engine working conditions. Based on the pressure time dependence we have calculated the heat released per combustion cycle. Using the time series of heat release to calculate the correlation coarse-grained entropy we estimated the noise level for internal combustion process. Our results show that for a larger spark advance angle the system is more deterministic. (c) 2004 American Institute of Physics

Disclosed herein are atmospheric pressure pin-to-hole pulsed spark discharge devices and methods for creating plasma. The devices include a conduit for fluidically communicating a gas, a plasma, or both, therethrough, portion of the conduit capable of being connected to a gas supply, and a second portion of the conduit capable of emitting a plasma; a positive electrode comprising a sharp tip; and a ground plate electrode. Disclosed are methods for treating a skin ulcer using non-thermal plasma include flowing a gas through a cold spark discharge zone simultaneously with the creation of a pulsed spark discharge to give rise to a non-thermal plasma emitted from a conduit, the non-thermal plasma comprising NO; and contacting a skin ulcer with said non-thermal plasma for sufficient time and intensity to give rise to treatment of the skin ulcer.

Full Text Available Abstract This research is on the development and testing of a biogas-petrol blend to run a spark ignition engine. A2080 ratio biogaspetrol blend was developed as an alternative fuel for spark ignition engine test bed. Petrol and biogas-petrol blend were comparatively tested on the test bed to determine the effectiveness of the fuels. The results of the tests showed that biogas petrol blend generated higher torque brake power indicated power brake thermal efficiency and brake mean effective pressure but lower fuel consumption and exhaust temperature than petrol. The research concluded that a spark ignition engine powered by biogas-petrol blend was found to be economical consumed less fuel and contributes to sanitation and production of fertilizer.

Massive array-based climate data is being generated from global surveillance systems and model simulations. They are widely used to analyze the environment problems, such as climate changes, natural hazards, and public health. However, knowing the underlying information from these big climate datasets is challenging due to both data- and computing- intensive issues in data processing and analyzing. To tackle the challenges, this paper proposes ClimateSpark, an in-memory distributed computing framework to support big climate data processing. In ClimateSpark, the spatiotemporal index is developed to enable Apache Spark to treat the array-based climate data (e.g. netCDF4, HDF4) as native formats, which are stored in Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) without any preprocessing. Based on the index, the spatiotemporal query services are provided to retrieve dataset according to a defined geospatial and temporal bounding box. The data subsets will be read out, and a data partition strategy will be applied to equally split the queried data to each computing node, and store them in memory as climateRDDs for processing. By leveraging Spark SQL and User Defined Function (UDFs), the climate data analysis operations can be conducted by the intuitive SQL language. ClimateSpark is evaluated by two use cases using the NASA Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) climate reanalysis dataset. One use case is to conduct the spatiotemporal query and visualize the subset results in animation; the other one is to compare different climate model outputs using Taylor-diagram service. Experimental results show that ClimateSpark can significantly accelerate data query and processing, and enable the complex analysis services served in the SQL-style fashion.

Spark induced compression ignition (SICI) is a relatively new combustion control technology and a promising combustion mode in gasoline engines with high efficiency. SICI can be divided into two categories, SACI and SI-CI. This paper investigated the SICI combustion process using combustion visualization and engine experiment respectively. Ignition process of SICI was captured by high speed photography in an optical engine with different compression ratios. The results show that SICI is a combustion mode combined with partly flame propagation and main auto-ignition. The spark ignites the local mixture near spark electrodes and the flame propagation occurs before the homogeneous mixture is auto-ignited. The heat release from central burned zone due to the flame propagation increases the in-cylinder pressure and temperature, resulting in the unburned mixture auto-ignition. The SICI combustion process can be divided into three stages of the spark induced stage, the flame propagation stage and the compression ignition stage. The SICI combustion mode is different from the spark ignition (SI) knocking in terms of the combustion and emission characteristics. Furthermore, three typical combustion modes including HCCI, SICI, SI, were compared on a gasoline direct injection engine with higher compression ratio and switchable cam-profiles. The results show that SICI has an obvious combustion characteristic with two-stage heat release and lower pressure rise rate. The SICI combustion mode can be controlled by spark timings and EGR rates and utilized as an effective method for high load extension on the gasoline HCCI engine. The maximum IMEP of 0.82 MPa can be achieved with relatively low NO x emission and high thermal efficiency. The SICI combustion mode can be applied in medium-high load region for high efficiency gasoline engines.

During a quadrupole-triplet neutrino experiment with the 15-Foot Bubble Chamber at Fermilab, a large number of events was recorded on ≅ 110000 good holograms, which were taken simultaneously with the conventional three-view photographs. The holograms allow the study of event vertices in a large volume with greatly improved resolution. The experimental setup and the operation of the system is described. Preliminary results obtained during the replay of holograms with the newly developed real- and virtual-image machines are discussed. (orig.)

Full Text Available How can the visual and textual data about an image – the image of a work of art – on recto and verso of a picture be interpreted? An analogical-art-documentary photograph represents a palimpsest to be considered layer by layer. The examples discussed in this article, which refer to both Aby Warburg himself and the first nucleus of the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection, contribute to effectively outline elements of the debate around the question of the photographic reproduction of the work of art as well as of the position of photography in relation to the perception of the work of art.

The limitations on high-current rf linacs due to gap sparking, cavity loading, and the beam breakup instability are studied. It appears possible to achieve cavity accelerating gradients as high as 35 MV/m without sparking. Furthermore, a linear analysis, as well as self-consistent particle simulations of a multipulsed 10 kA beam, indicated that only a negligible small fraction of energy is radiated into nonfundamental cavity modes. Finally, the beam breakup instability is analyzed and found to be able to magnify initial radial perturbations by a factor of no more than about 20 during the beam transit time through a 1 GeV accelerator

Distribution transformers in rural networks have to cope with transient overvoltages, even with those caused by the direct lightning strokes to the lines. In Finland the 24 kV network conditions, such as wooden pole lines, high soil resistivity and isolated neutral network, lead into fast transient overvoltages. Impulse testing of pole-mounted distribution transformers ({<=} 200 kVA) protected by means of spark gaps were studied. Different failure detection methods were used. Results can be used as background information for standardization work dealing with distribution transformers protected by means of spark gaps. (orig.) 9 refs.

Effect of electric spark pulses on the character of fracture of surface layers of chromium monocrystals during cutting in crystallographic planes (100), (110) and (111) is established. Crystallographical anisotropy of defect formation is determined and the value of defective layers during cutting in the above planes is found. A conclusion is made that cracks in chromium monocrystals of commercial grade during electric-spark cutting are formed in planes (100) and more seldom in (111) ones. A high-temperature annealing for the reduction of initial properties of chromium surface layers is suggested

Two types of copper samples, compact certified copper reference materials and calibration samples prepared from liquid doped, pressed copper powders, were studied in terms of accuracy of obtained calibration functions originating from infrared spark ablation. Additionally, corresponding particle size distributions of the aerosols from infrared spark ablation were recorded. It is shown that the differences in quantification results, originating from the two sets of calibration functions, could not mainly be ascribed to different particle size distributions of the two copper sample types. Possible other causes, as different ablation rates, parts of melting and differences of the chemical constitutions of the two sample types were explored.

This article shows a concrete and easy recognizable view of a cumulative distribution function(cdf). Photograph views of the search tabs on dictionaries are used to increase students' understanding and facility with the concept of a cumulative distribution function. Projects for student investigations are also given. This motivation and view helps…

Public-key decryption method proposed to guarantee authenticity of photographic images represented in form of digital files. In method, digital camera generates original data from image in standard public format; also produces coded signature to verify standard-format image data. Scheme also helps protect against other forms of lying, such as attaching false captions.

Full Text Available In today’s world, knowledge is increasingly impacted via visual representation. The messages sent through various sources, such as newspaper, television and the internet, lead people to form opinions about various topics. In this context, photography is one of the most powerful source of information. Moreover, the visual power and the ability to show nonverbal communication makes it a perfect tool for propaganda. These days, photographs showing war themes are used more often than the past. It can be said that war photographs serve as a tool for showing the world the realities of war to those, even to those who turn their back to massacres. After all, a dead body creates a shocking effect in the seer. In this study, the context of the photographs of the war, examined in sample of photograph of Aylan Kurdi, which became the “icon” of immigration due to Syrian civil war and war it relates to and it is studied to understand how it is assessed and understood considering the environment and conditions on the date the photo was taken, existing values, beliefs and things happened in the world in that time, from a critical point of view.

Results: Spark Program caused significant changes in all the variables of the study, except speed and agility, in the experimental group after 24 sessions. The changes included: agility and speed (P=0.731, balance (P=0, strength (P=0.002, and bilateral coordination (P=0. Conclusion: Spark Motor Program can improve gross motor skills in intellectually disabled educable students.

Full Text Available In this study, an alternative prototype has been designed and constructed for variable valve timing systems which are used in spark ignition engines. The effects of intake valve timing and lift changing on engine performance have been investigated without changing the opening duration of the valves. A four stroke, single cylinder, spark ignition engine has been used for these experiments.

A novel direct sampling ionisation scheme for ambient mass spectrometry is presented. Desorption and ionisation are achieved by a quasi-continuous laser induced plasma in air. Since there are no solid or liquid electrodes involved the ion source does not suffer from chemical interferences or fatigue originating from erosive burning or from electrode consumption. The overall plasma maintains electro-neutrality, minimising charge effects and accompanying long term drift of the charged particles trajectories. In the airborne plasma approach the ambient air not only serves as the plasma medium but at the same time also slows down the nascent ions via collisional cooling. Ionisation of the analyte molecules does not occur in the plasma itself but is induced by interaction with nascent ionic fragments, electrons and/or far ultraviolet photons in the plasma vicinity. At each individual air-spark an audible shockwave is formed, providing new reactive species, which expands concentrically and, thus, prevents direct contact of the analyte with the hot region inside the plasma itself. As a consequence the interaction volume between plasma and analyte does not exceed the threshold temperature for thermal dissociation or fragmentation. Experimentally this indirect ionisation scheme is demonstrated to be widely unspecific to the chemical nature of the analyte and to hardly result in any fragmentation of the studied molecules. A vast ensemble of different test analytes including polar and non-polar hydrocarbons, sugars, low mass active ingredients of pharmaceuticals as well as natural biomolecules in food samples directly out of their complex matrices could be shown to yield easily accessible yet meaningful spectra. Since the plasma medium is humid air, the chemical reaction mechanism of the ionisation is likely to be similar to other ambient ionisation techniques. Wir stellen hier eine neue Ionisationsmethode für die Umgebungsionisation (ambient ionisation) vor. Sowohl die

Full Text Available Use of the growth chambers for cabbage breeding allows the reducing of certain stages of the breeding process and the growing biennial varieties of cabbage in a one-year cycle. In these growth chambers, the nutritional conditions, temperature, and lighting of plants are under control; the open pollination is eliminated.

Shielding effectiveness measurements in a dual vibrating intrinsic reverberation chamber results in very repeatable results for a large frequency range and large dynamic range. Antennas in reverberation chambers do not need any gain, but the losses should be low and the dimensions should be small.

Shielding effectiveness measurements have been performed using a reverberation chamber. The reverberation chamber methodology as we1l as the measurement setup is described and some results are given. Samples include glass reinforced plastic panels, aluminum panels with many holes, wire mesh, among

A directional neutron detector has an ion chamber formed in a dielectric material; a signal electrode and a ground electrode formed in the ion chamber; a neutron absorbing material filling the ion chamber; readout circuitry which is electrically coupled to the signal and ground electrodes; and a signal processor electrically coupled to the readout circuitry. The ion chamber has a pair of substantially planar electrode surfaces. The chamber pressure of the neutron absorbing material is selected such that the reaction particle ion trail length for neutrons absorbed by the neutron absorbing material is equal to or less than the distance between the electrode surfaces. The signal processor is adapted to determine a path angle for each absorbed neutron based on the rise time of the corresponding pulse in a time-varying detector signal.

An advanced rocket thrust chamber for future space application is described along with an improved method of fabrication. Potential benefits of the concept are improved cyclic life, reusability, and performance. Performance improvements are anticipated because of the enhanced heat transfer into the coolant which will enable higher chamber pressure in expander cycle engines. Cyclic life, reusability and reliability improvements are anticipated because of the enhanced structural compliance inherent in the construction. The method of construction involves the forming of the combustion chamber with a tube-bundle of high conductivity copper or copper alloy tubes, and the bonding of these tubes by an electroforming operation. Further, the method of fabrication reduces chamber complexity by incorporating manifolds, jackets, and structural stiffeners while having the potential for thrust chamber cost and weight reduction.

An irradiation damage chamber that can be used to rapidly simulate fast neutron damage in fission or fusion materials has been designed and constructed. The chamber operates in conjunction with dual Van de Graaff accelerators at ORNL to simulate a wide range of irradiation conditions, including pulsed irradiation. Up to six experiments, each with up to nine 3-mm disk specimens, can be loaded into the ultrahigh vacuum chamber. Specimen holders are heated with individual electron guns, and the temperature of each specimen can be monitored during bombardment by an infrared pyrometer. Three different dose levels may be obtained during any single bombardment, and the heavy-ion flux on each of the nine specimens can be measured independently with only a brief interruption of the beam. The chamber has been in service for nearly three years, during which time approximately 250 bombardments have been successfully carried out. An appendix contains detailed procedures for operating the chamber

We investigate the plausibility of the stratified Boycott effect as a source of layering in magma chambers. Crystal settling within the magma chamber will generate buoyant fluid near the sloping sidewalls whose vertical ascent may be limited by the ambient stratification associated with vertical gradients in SiO2. The resulting flow may be marked by a layered structure, each layer taking the form of a convection cell spanning the lateral extent of the magma chamber. Using parameters relevant to magma chambers, we estimate that such convection cells would be established over a timescale of a month and have a depth on the order of 4m, which is roughly consistent with field observations of strata within solidified chambers.

Combination of photographic and drafting techniques has been developed to simplify the preparation of three dimensional and dimetric engineering drawings. Conventional photographs can be converted to line drawings by making copy negatives on high contrast film.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration — The Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon is considered the definitive reference manual to the global photographic coverage of the Moon. The images contained...

To further the understanding of the biological effects of radiation a knowledge of the spatial distribution of ionizations in small volumes is required. A cloud chamber capable of resolving the droplets formed on individual ions in the tracks of low-energy electrons has been constructed. It is made to high-vacuum specifications and contains a mixture of permanent gases and vapours, unsaturated before expansion, at a total pressure of 10 kPa. Condensation efficiencies close to 100% are obtained without significant background from condensation on uncharged particles and molecular aggregates. This paper describes the chamber, associated equipment and method of operation and discusses the performance of the system. Photographs of the droplets produced from the interaction of low-energy X-rays in the chamber gas for various modes of operation are presented. The mean energy loss per ion pair for electrons produced by the interaction of Al X-rays in the chamber gas (8130 Pa H 2 , 700 Pa C 2 H 5 OH, 690 Pa H 2 O, 400 Pa He, 70 Pa air) has been measured as 29.8 +- 0.7 eV per ion pair compared with a calculated value of 29.6 +- 0.4 eV per ion pair. (author)

Highlights: • We clarified the mechanism of EGR improving fuel economy of gasoline engines. • At constant air–fuel ratio, reduction of heat transfer loss is most significant. • At full load, elimination of fuel enrichment is dominant. • Combustion irreversibility increases with EGR. • Availability in the exhaust and heat transfer losses is smaller than energy losses. - Abstract: Exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) is effective to improve fuel economy of spark-ignition gasoline engines, but the detailed mechanism needs to be further investigated. In this paper, an in-depth analysis of the effects of cooled EGR on the fuel conversion efficiency of a boosted, spark-ignited, direct-injection, gasoline engines operated at the full, medium and low loads is conducted with the engine experiment and 1-D cycle simulation based on the first and second laws of thermodynamics. For all the operating loads, EGR increases the ratio of specific heat of working gas, reduces the fraction of heat transfer through the combustion chamber walls, and improves the pumping work during the gas exchanging stroke. Besides, EGR may replace the fuel enrichment at high load, advance the combustion phasing and increase the degree of constant volume heat release at the medium and high loads. As a result, about 1.1–4.1% improvements in the brake thermal efficiency are obtained by the 12–17% EGR at different loads. Despite the increased fraction of combustion-generated irreversibility (destruction in availability or exergy), the fraction of indicated work in the total availability increases with EGR for all the operating loads. Among the influencing factors, the effect of reduction in the heat transfer loss owing to EGR is dominant in improvement of the fuel conversion efficiency at constant air–fuel ratio, while replacement of the fuel enrichment with EGR is most effective at full load

Full Text Available This paper on providing "oo-information" (= objective object-information on cultural monuments and sites, based on 3D photographs is also a contribution of CIPA task group 3 to the 2013 CIPA Symposium in Strasbourg. To stimulate the interest in 3D photography for scientists as well as for amateurs, 3D-Masterpieces are presented. Exemplary it is shown, due to their high documentary value ("near reality", 3D photography support, e.g. the recording, the visualization, the interpretation, the preservation and the restoration of architectural and archaeological objects. This also includes samples for excavation documentation, 3D coordinate calculation, 3D photographs applied for virtual museum purposes and as educational tools. In addition 3D photography is used for virtual museum purposes, as well as an educational tool and for spatial structure enhancement, which in particular holds for inscriptions and in rock arts. This paper is also an invitation to participate in a systematic survey on existing international archives of 3D photographs. In this respect it is also reported on first results, to define an optimum digitization rate for analog stereo views. It is more than overdue, in addition to the access to international archives for 3D photography, the available 3D photography data should appear in a global GIS(cloud-system, like on, e.g., google earth. This contribution also deals with exposing new 3D photographs to document monuments of importance for Cultural Heritage, including the use of 3D and single lense cameras from a 10m telescope staff, to be used for extremely low earth based airborne 3D photography, as well as for "underwater staff photography". In addition it is reported on the use of captive balloon and drone platforms for 3D photography in Cultural Heritage. It is liked to emphasize, the still underestimated 3D effect on real objects even allows, e.g., the spatial perception of extremely small scratches as well as of nuances in

Bill Hurter is the editor of ""Rangefinder"" magazine, the former editor of ""Petersen's PhotoGraphic,"" and the author of ""The Best of Wedding Photography, Group Portrait Photography Handbook, The Portrait Photographer's Guide to Posing, ""and ""Portrait Photographer's Handbook. ""He lives in Santa Monica, California.

... 7 Agriculture 6 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Photographs for news or advertising. 500.9 Section 500... for news or advertising. Photographs for news purposes may be taken at the USNA without prior permission. Photographs for advertising and other commercial purposes may be taken, but only with the prior...

The inclusion of photographic approaches in the business classroom can incorporate missing elements of liberal education into business education, which were highlighted in a recent Carnegie study of undergraduate business education. Building on photographic methods in social science research, we identify three categories of photographic approaches…

A thermodynamic model has been developed and applied to predict the emission levels and performance of a spark ignition engine with using Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) gas. The model simulates the full thermodynamic cycle of the engine and includes heat transfer, combustion, gas exchange process, thermal dissociation of water and carbon dioxide, and chemical equilibrium.

The paper presents the modeling and simulation for the extrusion technology of a new type of spark plug body for Dacia Supernova car. This technology was simulated using the finite elements modeling and analysis SuperForm software, designed for the simulation of plastic deformation processes. There is also presented a comparison between the results of the simulation and the industrial results.

A description of the automated microphotometer and its operation is given, which includes measurement under computer control. Speed and precision tests indicate that the system is superior in every respect to that in which an analyst reads photoplates in spark-source mass spectrometry

..., power driven or manually operated spark producing devices shall not be used in bulk cargo tanks, fuel oil tanks, cargo pumprooms, or enclosed spaces immediately above or adjacent to bulk cargo tanks unless all the following conditions are met: (1) The compartment itself is gas-free; (2) The compartments...

Nanostructuring of functional materials is an essential part in the design of energy related devices – but the industrial tools we have to make these materials are lacking. This dissertation explores the green, flexible, and scalable spark discharge process for the fabrication of complex

Full Text Available In the present study, SnSb, SnSb/Fe, SnSb/Co, and SnSb/Ni alloy powders processed by co-precipitation were subjected to spark plasma-sintering (SPS) at 400 °C for 5 min. The compacts were structurally and morphologically characterized by X...

Abstract. A compact spark pre-ionized pulser sustainer TE–CO2 laser that can produce an output energy of one joule with an overall efficiency of 12·4% is presented. Optical pulses have durations of 7·15µs FWHM. Here, the laser uses all solid-state excitation (ASSE) circuit and the discharge formed between two.

In the 1910s, New York suffragette Electra Sparks wrote a series of essays in the Moving Picture News that advocated for cine-therapy treatments for pregnant women. Film was, in her view, the great democratizer of beautiful images, providing high-cultural access to the city's poor. These positive 'mental pictures' were important for her because, she claimed, in order to produce an attractive, healthy child, the mother must be exposed to quality cultural material. Sparks's championing of cinema during its 'second birth' was founded upon the premise of New Thought. This metaphysical Christian doctrine existed alongside the self-help and esoteric publishing domains and testified, above all, to the possibility of the 'mind-cure' of the body through the positive application of 'mental pictures'. Physiologically, their method began best in the womb, where the thoughts of the mother were of utmost importance: the eventual difference between birthing an Elephant Man or an Adonis. This positive maternal impression was commonplace in New Thought literature; it was Sparks's innovation to apply it to cinema. Investigating Sparks's film theory, practice and programming reveals her to be a harbinger of the abiding analogy between mind and motion picture that occupies film theorists to this day.

that this arc resistance can be questioned. A detailed numerical study of an arc came from the research on thunder and lightning .4 This study is......Introduction The electrical characteristics of an arc that is produced by a high-current pulse have been studied for spark gap switches, lightning and

Full Text Available Spark-anodization of titanium can produce adherent and wear-resistant TiO2 film on the surface, but the spark-anodized titanium has lots of surface micro-pores, resulting in an unstable and high friction coefficient against many counterparts. In this study, the diamond-like carbon (DLC was introduced into the micro-pores of spark-anodized titanium by the magnetron sputtering technique and a TiO2/DLC composite coating was fabricated. The microstructure and tribological properties of TiO2/DLC composite coating were investigated and compared with the anodic TiO2 mono-film and DLC mono-film. Results show that the DLC deposition significantly decreased the surface roughness and porosity of spark-anodized titanium. The fabricated TiO2/DLC composite coating exhibited a more stable and much lower friction coefficient than anodic TiO2 mono-film. Although the friction coefficient of the composite coating and the DLC mono-film was similar under both light load and heavy load conditions, the wear life of the composite coating was about 43% longer than that of DLC mono-film under heavy load condition. The wear rate of titanium with protective composite coating was much lower than that of titanium with DLC mono-film. The superior low friction coefficient and wear rate of the TiO2/DLC composite coating make it a good candidate as protective coating on titanium alloys.

InnerSpark is a residential summer arts training program for high school students established by the California State Legislature (California Education Code sections 8950-8957) in order to make it possible for "artistically gifted and talented students, broadly representative of the socioeconomic and ethnic diversity of the state, to receive…

Since hydroxyapatite-based materials have similar composition and crystallinity as natural calcified tissues, can be used for bone/tissue engineering. In the present study a novel nanocomposite based on bioceramics such as Natural Hydroxyapatite (NHA) and Baghdadite (BAG), was sintered by spark

A series of samples of hexagonal boron nitride-aluminum nitride ceramic composites with different amounts of CaF(2) as sintering aid were prepared by spark plasma sintered at 1700-1850 degrees C for 5 min. The addition of CaF(2) effectively lowered the sintering temperature and promoted the

Rompe [8] show discrepancies of up to a factor of 10, excellent agreement is found with the model of Mesyats [ 6] and Vlastos [9] for times up to...Leipzig Johann Ambrosius [9] Vlastos , A.E. "The Channel Resistance of Sparks," lEE Gas Discharges Conference Proceedings, pp. 31- 34 (Sept. 1970

to maintain pre-consolidation particle size and to compensate Sb evaporation during reduction. Significant changes in particle size and morphology were observed, and the post-reduction cooling was found to be an important stage in the process. The spark plasma sintering (SPS) parameters were optimized...

The dosimetry in computed tomography (CT) is carried out by the use of a pencil type ionization-chamber, because it has a uniform response at all angles relative to the incident beam of radiation, which is essential for CT equipment since the X-ray tube executes a circular movement around the table during irradiation. The commercial ionization chamber used to perform quality control procedures of this kind of equipment has a length of the sensitive volume of 10 cm. In the Calibration Laboratory of Instruments (LCI) of the IPEN there were already developed some prototypes with small differences in construction, when compared to commercially available ionization chambers. They have been used in previous studies and showed results within internationally acceptable limits. The ionization chambers tested in this study present the sensitive volume lengths of 1 cm, 3 cm and 10 cm. The objective of this study was to present results on the stability test of the three homemade ionization chambers and a commercial chamber, as well to obtain the calibration coefficients for each of them in CT standard X radiation beams. The obtained results for both characterization tests are within the recommended limits, except for the homemade ionization chambers with sensitive volume lengths of 3 cm and 1 cm in the case of the stability test. (author)

Monitored Drift Chambers (MDT) are used in the ATLAS Detector to measure the momentum of high energy muons. They consist of drift tubes, which are filled with an Ar-CO2 gas mixture at 3 bar gas pressure. About 1200 drift chambers are required for ATLAS. They are up to 6 m long. Nevertheless the position of every wire needs to be known with a precision of 20 µm within a chamber. In addition, optical alignment sensors are required to measure the relative position of adjacent chambers with a precision of 30µm. This gigantic task seems impossible at first instance. Indeed it took many years of R&D to invent the right tools and methods before the first chamber could be built according to specifications. Today, at the time when 50% of the chambers have been produced, we are confident that the goal for ATLAS can be reached. The mechanical precision of the chambers could be verified with the x-ray tomograph at CERN. This ingenious device, developed for the MDT system, is able to measure the wire position insid...

A multiple sampling ionization chamber (MUSIC) was developed for use in conjunction with the Atlas scattering chamber (ATSCAT). This chamber was developed to study the (α, p) reaction in stable and radioactive beams. The gas filled ionization chamber is used as a target and detector for both particles in the outgoing channel (p + beam particles for elastic scattering or p + residual nucleus for (α, p) reactions). The MUSIC detector is followed by a Si array to provide a trigger for anode events. The anode events are gated by a gating grid so that only (α, p) reactions where the proton reaches the Si detector result in an anode event. The MUSIC detector is a segmented ionization chamber. The active length of the chamber is 11.95 in. and is divided into 16 equal anode segments (3.5 in. x 0.70 in. with 0.3 in. spacing between pads). The dead area of the chamber was reduced by the addition of a Delrin snout that extends 0.875 in. into the chamber from the front face, to which a mylar window is affixed. 0.5 in. above the anode is a Frisch grid that is held at ground potential. 0.5 in. above the Frisch grid is a gating grid. The gating grid functions as a drift electron barrier, effectively halting the gathering of signals. Setting two sets of alternating wires at differing potentials creates a lateral electric field which traps the drift electrons, stopping the collection of anode signals. The chamber also has a reinforced mylar exit window separating the Si array from the target gas. This allows protons from the (α, p) reaction to be detected. The detection of these protons opens the gating grid to allow the drift electrons released from the ionizing gas during the (α, p) reaction to reach the anode segment below the reaction

A multiple sampling ionization chamber (MUSIC) was developed for use in conjunction with the Atlas scattering chamber (ATSCAT). This chamber was developed to study the ({alpha}, p) reaction in stable and radioactive beams. The gas filled ionization chamber is used as a target and detector for both particles in the outgoing channel (p + beam particles for elastic scattering or p + residual nucleus for ({alpha}, p) reactions). The MUSIC detector is followed by a Si array to provide a trigger for anode events. The anode events are gated by a gating grid so that only ({alpha}, p) reactions where the proton reaches the Si detector result in an anode event. The MUSIC detector is a segmented ionization chamber. The active length of the chamber is 11.95 in. and is divided into 16 equal anode segments (3.5 in. x 0.70 in. with 0.3 in. spacing between pads). The dead area of the chamber was reduced by the addition of a Delrin snout that extends 0.875 in. into the chamber from the front face, to which a mylar window is affixed. 0.5 in. above the anode is a Frisch grid that is held at ground potential. 0.5 in. above the Frisch grid is a gating grid. The gating grid functions as a drift electron barrier, effectively halting the gathering of signals. Setting two sets of alternating wires at differing potentials creates a lateral electric field which traps the drift electrons, stopping the collection of anode signals. The chamber also has a reinforced mylar exit window separating the Si array from the target gas. This allows protons from the ({alpha}, p) reaction to be detected. The detection of these protons opens the gating grid to allow the drift electrons released from the ionizing gas during the ({alpha}, p) reaction to reach the anode segment below the reaction.

The Sigma welding team was approached to help fabricate a small fission chamber (roughly ½ inch dia. x ½ inch tall cylinder). These chambers are used as radiation sensors that contain small traces of radionuclides (Cf 252, U 235, and U 238) that serve to ionize gas atoms in addition to external radiation. When a voltage is applied within the chamber, the resulting ion flow can be calibrated and monitored. Aluminum has the advantage of not forming radioactive compounds when exposed to high external radiation (except from minor Na alloy content). Since aluminum has not been used before in this application, this presented an unexplored challenge.

Cross-section of the final prototype for the LEP vacuum chamber. The elliptic main-opening is for the beam. The small channel to the left is for the cooling water, to carry away the heat deposited by the synchrotron radiation. The square channel to the right houses the Non-Evaporable Getter (NEG) pump. The chamber is made from extruded aluminium. Its outside is clad with lead, to stop the synchrotron radiation emitted by the beam. For good adherence between Pb and Al, the Al chamber was coated with a thin layer of Ni. Ni being slightly magnetic, some resulting problems had to be overcome. See also 8301153.

The 1104-m circumference Advanced Photon Source Storage Ring Vacuum System is composed of 240 individual sections, which are fabricated from a combination of aluminum extrusions and machined components. The vacuum chambers will have 3800 weld joints, each subject to strict vacuum requirements, as well as a variety of related design criteria. The vacuum criteria and chamber design are reviewed, including a discussion of the weld joint geometries. The critical fabrication process parameters for meeting the design requirements are discussed. The experiences of the prototype chamber fabrication program are presented. Finally, the required facilities preparation for construction activity is briefly described. 6 refs., 6 figs., 1 tab

A dilution refrigerator is an instrument to reach temperatures in the mK region in a continuous way. The temperature range can be extended and the cooling power can be enlarged by adding an extra mixing chamber. In this way we obtain a double mixing chamber system. In this thesis the theory of the multiple mixing chamber is presented and tested on its validity by comparison with the measurements. Measurements on a dilution refrigerator with a circulation rate up to 2.5 mmol/s are also reported. (Auth.)

This paper is concerned with the propagation of laser light through a slab of a randomly varying medium. A theoretical analysis is presented which relates the spectrum of the recorded-intensity field some distance downstream of the medium to the spectrum of the index-of-refraction field. For a homogeneous and isotropic random field, the 3-D spectrum of the medium is obtained from the 2-D spectrum of the photograph by dividing each component of the spectrum by the frequency raised to the fourth power. Free-space propagation outside the random medium is accounted for by a scaling factor. Experimental results are presented which support the theoretical analysis. The nonintrusive diagnostic technique presented here is applicable to photographs which contain partially developed caustic networks.

Galaxies - the Milky Way's siblings - offer a surprising variety of forms and colours. Displaying symmetrical spiral arms, glowing red nebulae or diffuse halos, even the image of a galaxy can reveal much about its construction. All galaxies consist of gas, dust and stars, but the effects of gravity, dark matter and the interaction of star formation and stellar explosions all influence their appearances. This volume showcases more than 250 of the most beautiful galaxies within an amateur's reach and uses them to explain current astrophysical research. It features fantastic photographs, unique insights into our knowledge, tips on astrophotography and essential facts and figures based on the latest science. From the Andromeda Galaxy to galaxy clusters and gravitational lenses, the nature of galaxies is revealed through these stunning amateur photographs. This well illustrated reference atlas deserves a place on the bookshelves of astronomical imagers, observers and armchair enthusiasts.

The digitizing system allows digitization of photographs or sketches of waveforms and then the computer is used to reduce and analyze the data. The software allows for alignment, calibration, removal of baselines, removal of unwanted points and addition of new points which makes for a fairly versatile system as far as data reduction and manipulation are concerned. System considerations are introduced first to orient the potential user to the process of digitizing information. The start up and actual commands for TRACE are discussed. Detailed descriptions of each subroutine and program section are also provided. Three general examples of typical photographs are included. A partial listing of FAWTEK is made available. Once suitable arrays that contain the data are arranged, ''GO FA'' (active FAWTEK) and many mathematical operations to further analyze the data may be performed

Recent years have witnessed waves of protests sweeping across countries and continents, in some cases resulting in political and governmental change. Much media attention has been focused on the increasing usage of social media to coordinate and provide instantly available reports on these protests. Here, we investigate whether it is possible to identify protest outbreaks through quantitative analysis of activity on the photo sharing site Flickr. We analyse 25 million photos uploaded to Flickr in 2013 across 244 countries and regions, and determine for each week in each country and region what proportion of the photographs are tagged with the word "protest" in 34 different languages. We find that higher proportions of "protest"-tagged photographs in a given country and region in a given week correspond to greater numbers of reports of protests in that country and region and week in the newspaper The Guardian. Our findings underline the potential value of photographs uploaded to the Internet as a source of global, cheap and rapidly available measurements of human behaviour in the real world.

Full Text Available Recent years have witnessed waves of protests sweeping across countries and continents, in some cases resulting in political and governmental change. Much media attention has been focused on the increasing usage of social media to coordinate and provide instantly available reports on these protests. Here, we investigate whether it is possible to identify protest outbreaks through quantitative analysis of activity on the photo sharing site Flickr. We analyse 25 million photos uploaded to Flickr in 2013 across 244 countries and regions, and determine for each week in each country and region what proportion of the photographs are tagged with the word "protest" in 34 different languages. We find that higher proportions of "protest"-tagged photographs in a given country and region in a given week correspond to greater numbers of reports of protests in that country and region and week in the newspaper The Guardian. Our findings underline the potential value of photographs uploaded to the Internet as a source of global, cheap and rapidly available measurements of human behaviour in the real world.

The mixture preparation in gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines operating at stratified condition plays an important role in deciding the combustion, performance and emission characteristics of the engine. In a wall-guided GDI engine, with a late fuel injection strategy, piston top surface is designed in such a way that the injected fuel is directed towards the spark plug to form a combustible mixture at the time of ignition. In addition, in these engines, location of spark-plug and fuel injector, fuel injection pressure and timing are also important to create a combustible mixture near the spark plug. Therefore, understanding the mixture formation under the influence of the location of spark plug and fuel injector is very essential for the optimization of the engine parameters. In this study, an attempt is made to understand the effect of spark plug and fuel injector location on the mixture preparation in a four-stroke, four-valve and wall-guided GDI engine operating under a stratified condition by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. All the CFD simulations are carried out at an engine speed of 2000 rev/min., and compression ratio of 10.6, at an overall equivalence ratio (ER) of about 0.65. The fuel injection and spark timings are maintained at 605 and 710 CADs respectively. Finally, it is concluded that, combination of central spark plug and side fuel injector results in better combustion and performance.

The construction of a chamber designed for neutron diffraction studies of the structure of solids under high gas pressures up to 0.5 GPa is described. This chamber is a modification of the chamber published earlier

.... In this method, the aerosol chamber control software manipulates circulation fan speeds, chamber vacuum and agent spray times to produce a simulated dynamic cloud within the aerosol test chamber...

.... In this method, the aerosol chamber control software manipulates circulation fan speeds, chamber vacuum and agent spray times to produce a simulated dynamic cloud within the aerosol test chamber...

At the end of the last century, Gabriel Lippmann was experimenting with color photography. His photographic color recording technique, Lippmann photography, produced very beautiful photographs and the fact that the colors are preserved in the early Lippmann photographs indicates something about their archival properties. Recent progress in color reflection holography has made it possible to take a new look at this one hundred year old photographic technique. Today, high-resolution panchromatic recording materials suitable for Lippmann photography are on the market. In particular, the color photopolymers from DuPont have been investigated for modern Lippmann photography. Since the color photographs contain no dyes or pigments their archival stability may be high. In addition, a Lippmann photograph is difficult to copy which makes it a unique color photographic recording. Both of these features must attract a photographer interested in creating beautiful art photographs. Security application is another potential field for Lippmann photographs as well as optical filters. The dry processing of the photopolymer material is an important advantage. Another advantage is that no expensive equipment, such as lasers, is needed to explore this photographic recording technique; only a modified camera is required.

The goal of this project was the design and construction of an Expansion Cloud Chamber from daily use material in order to make visible during a lesson, the trajectories of particles emitted by a radioactive material (author)

Liquid ionization chambers [1] (LICs) have have been used in the last decades as background dosemeters. Since a few years LICs are also commercially available for dosimetry and are used for measurements of dose distributions where a high spatial distribution is necessary. Also in the last decades...... a differential equation applying several simplifications and approximations leading to discrepancies between theory and experiments [3]. The theory predicts the collection efficiency as a function of the electrical field and was applied for both air filled ionization chambers and liquid filled ionization...... chambers. For liquids the LET can be roughly deduced from the collection efficiency dependency on the electrical field inside a liquid ionization chambers [4] using an extrapolation method. We solved the fundamental differential equation again presented by Jaffe numerically, but now taking into account...

The obtention of uranium deposits of the required quality for small cylindrical fission chambers presents some difficulties. With the method of electroplating here described the uniformity, reproducibility and adherence of the obtained deposits were satisfactory. (Author) 6 refs

A study was performed to analytically determine the cyclic thermomechanical behavior and fatigue life of three configurations of a Plug Nozzle Thrust Chamber. This thrust chamber is a test model which represents the current trend in nozzle design calling for high performance coupled with weight and volume limitations as well as extended life for reusability. The study involved the use of different materials and material combinations to evaluate their application to the problem of low-cycle fatigue in the thrust chamber. The thermal and structural analyses were carried out on a three-dimensional basis. Results are presented which show plots of continuous temperature histories and temperature distributions at selected times during the operating cycle of the thrust chamber. Computed structural data show critical regions for low-cycle fatigue and the histories of strain within the regions for each operation cycle.

First results with a liquid ionization chamber using tetramethylsilane (TMS) are presented. A stack of iron plates was tested with cosmic ray muons and the charge output for minimum ionizing particles was measured. (orig.) [de

Mechanical design features of the reactor chamber for the HYLIFE-II inertial confinement fusion power plant are presented. A combination of oscillating and steady, molten salt streams (Li 2 BeF 4 ) are used for shielding and blast protection of the chamber walls. The system is designed for a 6 Hz repetition rate. Beam path clearing, between shots, is accomplished with the oscillating flow. The mechanism for generating the oscillating streams is described. A design configuration of the vessel wall allows adequate cooling and provides extra shielding to reduce thermal stresses to tolerable levels. The bottom portion of the reactor chamber is designed to minimize splash back of the high velocity (>12 m/s) salt streams and also recover up to half of the dynamic head. Cost estimates for a 1 GWe and 2 GWe reactor chamber are presented

An algorithm to model the diffusion of radioactive decay chain atoms is presented. Exact mathematical solutions in cylindrical geometry are given. They are used to obtain expressions for the concentrations of 222 Rn progeny atoms in the volume and deposited on the wall surface in cylindrical diffusion chambers. The dependence of volume fractions of 222 Rn progeny and chamber sensitivity on the coefficient of diffusion of 222 Rn progeny atoms in air is modeled.